Why Do People Watch ‘The Office’ So Much That it Racked Up Almost 60 Billion Streaming Minutes Last Year

According to Nielsen, the most-watched TV show of 2020 was probably The Office, a show that ended in 2013 and stopped being good in 2011. Still, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, the show was viewed for almost a billion hours on Netflix in 2020, much more than the second-most-streamed show, Grey’s Anatomy.

I really don’t understand why The Office is the most-streamed show of the year.

Yeah, it’s a good show but I wouldn’t call it great. I have watched it once or twice since it’s been on streaming, but I can name half a dozen long-running recent sitcoms that are better: Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and Corner Gas. And now that I make that list, it occurs to me that none of those shows are on Netflix, and that gives New Girl a really good chance of being the most-streamed TV show of 2021.

Anyone who does follow The Office to NBC’s new streaming service Peacock will quickly realize they can just watch 30 Rock instead, and I don’t think the number will be that high anyway.

It does seem somewhat amazing that people will subscribe to Netflix for what is becoming an increasingly high monthly fee and just watch the same show over and over again. And not even a Netflix original, just a show they picked up from a network. And as Netflix has let their rights to better shows like How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock and Scrubs expire, people haven’t left in droves for Hulu, which picked up all of those shows along with Seinfeld.

You can also just buy The Office on Blu Ray for less than a year of Netflix and watch it whenever and without an internet connection. You can also buy 30 Rock on Blu Ray for half as much as The Office. Just saying.