Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been a massive success and has been much more popular with the older generation according to the latest data.
The Rings of Power is more popular with the older generation
The show’s audience was mostly older as 71 % of the viewers were 15 years old or older at the midway point of season one. Online engagement was also lower than expected for the show.
Its rival House of the Dragon has done better in both of those categories. Over 68 % of the viewers for the show were between the ages of 18 and 49. On TikTok, the hashtag for House of the Dragon has 5.4 billion views while The Rings of Power didn’t crack 700 million.
One of the reasons for that could be due to the older audience of the Amazon show. They are less likely to be engaged with online content, especially on TikTok, a short video sharing app aimed towards the younger generation.
A Need for Better Marketing
This is also an issue for the Amazon marketing departing and something they will try to remedy in season two. Game of Thrones has been around for a decade and has become part of the mainstream media. That has not been true for the Lord of the Rings as the movies were released in the early 2000s.
Another reason that Lord of the Rings hasn’t connected with the younger generation is that is started off very slow and most of the episodes lack epic battles. There is little violence and no sex featured on the show and those grab ratings as HBO knows all too well. If season two of The Rings of Power starts off and has better pacing, it can draw in viewers that are tuning into House of the Dragon every week.
Conclusion
Even with an older audience, the first season of The Rings of Power was successful. The show garnered buzz and was able to get the audience engaged. Now that we know who Sauron is, the showrunners will have to make us tune in every week for another reason. Let’s hope that they are up for the task.
I disagree why the show doesn’t engage people: the story lines are too vague, the score doesn’t tug at your heart, and none of the characters is a standout to rally behind. Their cause, maybe. But as individuals, no.