Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

The Rings of Power show is so boring, it keeps making this Amazon analyst fall asleep

Updated Oct 14th, 2022 3:35AM EDT
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Image: Prime Video

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Even though the first four episodes of Prime Video’s wildly expensive Lord of the Rings TV series The Rings of Power pretty much bored me out of my mind, I’m going to keep watching. Especially since the episode of the series that just dropped over the weekend features an epic battle, which no doubt diminishes the yawn factor considerably. The problem with the slow pace of the show thus far, though, is that some viewers might not end up going the distance and drop off in frustration.

That includes viewers like Tom Forte, an Amazon analyst at D.A. Davidson, who wrote in a recent note for investors that the performance of The Rings of Power has left him … concerned.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

“We fell asleep during our first viewings of episodes one, three, and four and have not watched episode five yet due to a combination of not enjoying the first four episodes and a busy schedule,” Forte wrote.

Forte went on to write that he had been hopeful in the lead-up to the launch of The Rings of Power. However, he’s grown more pessimistic since then about the series, which currently has a 38% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. “Nearly one month after its September 1 launch and five episodes in on an eight-episode season, the audience response (as measured by Rotten Tomatoes) is far worse than we initially expected (as suggested by the critics’ warm reception) and is not improving (as we had, initially, anticipated),” Forte continued.

Amazon, for its part, seems satisfied thus far with the performance of the show, one of the most expensive in TV history. In fact, the company said that, on its first day of availability on Prime Video, the show garnered “25 million global viewers.”

The true measure of success

However, the most important signal of this show’s success won’t be apparent right away.

Unlike a rival like Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video unit doesn’t make original shows or movies for the end goal of simply entertaining people. Prime Video’s original content is meant to serve as a key component of the Amazon operational flywheel — making a Prime membership seem so valuable, in other words, that it draws an ever-increasing number of signups, which means more money to make the Prime subscription package more valuable, which draws more signups, and on and on that wheel spins.

the lord of the rings: the rings of power
Nazanin Boniadi (Bronwyn) and Ismael Cruz Cordova (Arondir) in the Prime Video series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Image source: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

Forte uses some back-of-the-envelope math, however, to question whether its Lord of the Rings show is working.

“If we work off of Amazon’s reported figures of 25 million viewers for the launch and an audience of 200 million Prime members who engage with Prime Video, we come up with the following: 12.5% penetration (or 87.5% lack of interest),” Forte wrote, in his analyst note which was reported by Insider.


More Prime Video coverage: New on Prime Video: The best movies and shows (October 2022)

Andy Meek Trending News Editor

Andy Meek is a reporter based in Memphis who has covered media, entertainment, and culture for over 20 years. His work has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Forbes, and The Financial Times, and he’s written for BGR since 2015. Andy's coverage includes technology and entertainment, and he has a particular interest in all things streaming.

Over the years, he’s interviewed legendary figures in entertainment and tech that range from Stan Lee to John McAfee, Peter Thiel, and Reed Hastings.