Classic HBO Series Sees Viewership Spike After Biden Announcement
Trump's running mate announcement also made streaming waves.
President Joe Biden sent an already breakneck political news cycle into utter chaos on Sunday when he announced that he would be stepping down from his 2024 presidential campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. The news sent a shockwave into the Democratic party, with the tides quickly turning in favor of the former prosecutor.
And the news also triggered a renewed interest into the political satire Veep, which ran on HBO for seven seasons from 2012 through 2019.
The series starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, a fictional United States vice president who eventually ascends to the rank of commander-in-chief, in a potential "truth is stranger than fiction" turn. The series earned 17 total Primetime Emmy Awards during its run, including six consecutive wins for Louis-Dreyfus alone.
According to TMZ via the data company Luminate, viewership for Veep, which currently streams on Max, skyrocketed from 486,000 minutes watched on Sunday to 2.2 million minutes on Monday, at a whopping 350 percent increase.
In the wake of Biden's announcement, Veep series creator Armando Iannucci responded to a social media post noting the similarities between the series and real life, noting a possible outcome in the 2024 election if things continue to steer along the same course. "Don’t forget we made all that up, though," Iannucci quipped.
Don’t forget we made all that up, though https://t.co/tv1YFxccd7
— Armando Iannucci (@Aiannucci) July 21, 2024
Interestingly enough, the Harris endorsement is not the only current event to have an impact on streaming numbers.
In the wake of former President Donald Trump choosing Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance as his running mate, the Netflix biopic of the same name based on Vance's 2016 memoir began trending on the streamer. Forbes reports that the film debuted in the eighth spot for the week of July 15 to 21 on Netflix's Global Top 10 Movies chart, with 4.8 million views or roughly 9.4 million viewing hours.