‘The White Lotus’ Wraps Season 3 With Major Ratings Growth as Other Dramas Follow Suit

“The White Lotus” checked out of its third installment with major ratings growth, as the Season 3 finale soared over 50% from last season.

Sunday night’s finale brought in 6.2 million viewers across HBO and Max, a whopping 51% higher than the Season 2 finale, which at the time scored a series high with 4.1 million viewers.

Given that premiere viewership for “The White Lotus” is traditionally lower than finales, which reveal the victim(s) that met their end at the resort, it took Season 3 until well into the eight-episode season to reach that same level, with the Season 3 premiere dropping 41% down to 2.4 million viewers. Season 3 quickly added another million viewers for its second episode, which reached 3.4 million viewers, and by its sixth episode, which saw the aftermath of the salacious full moon party, reached a new series high of 4.2 million viewers.

The penultimate episode built on that audience and reached a new series high with 4.8 million viewers, which was quickly eclipsed by the finale with a 29% jump.

“The White Lotus” is just one of the drama series wrapping up with viewership growth this spring. The Hulu series “Paradise, for example,” scored 705 million viewing minutes — a different measurement approach that landed at No. 6 on Nielsen’s acquired titles list — during the week of March 3–9 after dropping its Season 1 finale. That marked substantial growth from the previous week’s viewership of 566 million viewing minutes.

Over the course of its first season, the Sterling K. Brown-led series logged 3.3 billion viewing minutes, with the show landing on the top 10 acquired series in the six weeks leading up to and through the finale.

Likewise, Apple TV+’s “Severance,” Paramount+ With Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” and Paramount+’s “1923” are in the midst of strong runs for their respective seasons, with “1923” taking the No. 5 spot on the streaming originals list with 796 million viewing minutes, while “Severance” logged 619 million viewing minutes.

With the third episode of “1923” Season 2 debuting March 9, the “Yellowstone” spinoff series grew its viewership by 18% from the previous week, which logged 676 million viewing minutes. Meanwhile, with eight episodes out in the lead-up to its Season 2 finale, viewership for “Severance” was relatively flat from the previous week, which saw the show log 622 million viewing minutes.

“Yellowjackets,” which debuted Season 3’s fifth episode during that week, took the No. 10 spot on the acquired streaming list with 569 million viewing minutes on Paramount+ and Netflix (which streams its first season), dropping slightly from the previous week’s 583 million viewing minutes.

Tariffs drive audiences to business channels

Not long after President Donald Trump announced the wide-sweeping tariffs on April 2, an influx of viewers headed to CNBC and Fox Business Network, boosting ratings for the business-news channels by double-digit percentages.

CNBC averaged 293,000 viewers during market hours from Wednesday to Friday — up 36% from the previous four weeks — while its full-day programming saw a 40% uptick when compared to previous weeks. Likewise, Fox Business Network averaged 234,000 viewers during the 9 a.m.–4 p.m. interval from Wednesday to Friday, rising 15% from the network’s average in March.

“Gunsmoke” fires onto streaming

After “Gunsmoke” scored 10 billion streaming minutes in 2024, the classic Western series, which is available on Peacock and Paramount+, made its first appearance on Nielsen’s top 10 streaming chart for acquired series, coming in at No. 8 with 646 million minutes viewed across its 404 episodes during the week of March 3.

Nearly half of the audience for the show — one of the longest-running dramatic series of all time, having run from 1955-1975 —is 65 and up, illustrating how older viewers are taking advantage of such nostalgic streaming options.

Telemundo dominates afternoons

Telemundo closed out the first quarter of 2025 as the most-watched Spanish-language television network on weekday afternoons thanks to “En Casa con Telemundo,” “La Mesa Caliente” and “Al Rojo Vivo.” Together, the series averaged 542,000 total viewers — outpacing Univision by 12% — and 126,000 viewers in the key demo among adults 18-49 — surpassing Univision’s audience by 2%.

March Madness shoots and scores

After the 2025 NCAA tournament kicked off its first two rounds with the biggest audience the tournament has seen since 1993, Monday night’s championship — which benefited from a down-to-the-final-shot finish — closed out March Madness with the biggest audience for an NCAA championship game since 2019, with the Florida-Houston matchup scoring 18.1 million viewers on CBS.

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