'The Office' Was the Most-Streamed TV Show of 2020

The Office was the most-streamed TV show last year by a rather large margin, Varietyreports. In figures released by Nielsen, the American adaptation was viewed for more than 57 billion minutes in the United States, far ahead of Grey's Anatomy, which finished in second with almost 40 billion minutes streamed.

The Office has been a streaming giant for quite some time now. It was Netflix's No. 1 show in 2018 and 2019. NBCUniversal's announcement two years ago that The Office would be transitioning to their streaming platform Peacock in January 2021 left many fans of the show distraught over its impending departure. Petitions were created to keep the series on Netflix, and cast members were dragged into the attempt to prevent the inevitable move.

Despite losing The Office, Netflix still has a stronghold on other categories, such as the top 10 most-watched original streaming series in the U.S. where the streaming service holds all but one spot. Similarly, Disney+ owned the feature film market, taking seven spots in the top 10. Frozen II lead the pack after amassing 14.92 billion minutes watched, followed by Moana with 10.51 billion.

Nielsen makes these rankings by looking at four of the major streaming services—Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus—and unfortunately limits the scope of their findings to estimations based on viewing on connected TVs, which omits the numbers that are being pulled in through mobile devices and computers. While those two formats could account for a significant amount of streaming minutes for a given program, it probably wouldn't be enough to overtake the dominance of The Office.