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Have you ever heard of Facebook Watch's biggest shows?

More than 400 million people are tuning into Facebook's video hub every month.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials
  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
Joan E. Solsman
2 min read
A character from Sacred Lies K e

Facebook renewed its original show Sacred Lies for a second season.

Facebook

Facebook Watch, the giant social network's video hub, is a year and a half old. And Facebook is ready to talk about what people -- and how many of them -- are actually watching. 

Chat show Red Table Talk, grieving-widow drama Sorry for your Loss, trivia show Confetti and an episode of reality series Returning the Favor all topped various metrics that Facebook tracks.

Every month, more than 400 million people spend at least a minute viewing video on Watch, the company said Thursday. On a daily basis, more than 75 million people visit Watch and stick around for at least a minute. Of those 75 million, the average watch time is 20 minutes. 

Watch this: See how much time you're wasting on Facebook

Over the last three years, Facebook has pushed aggressively into video, jostling with YouTube to vacuum up marketing dollars that are moving online from TV. Facebook's obsession with video culminated in Watch, which launched last year. Facebook has tweaked the types of programming it's pursued, but the underlying mission for Watch hasn't changed, according to Fidji Simo, Facebook's head of video. 

"The main thing that we're always trying to do is develop new forms of social engagement," Fidji Simo, the company's head of video, said in an interview this week. 

By pure number of followers, Jada Pinkett Smith's talk program Red Table Talk is the biggest show with 4.3 million viewers. Red Table Talk is also the most active Facebook group, based mostly on the amount of comments. 

The most loyal audience shows up for Sorry for Your Loss, a bereavement drama starring Elizabeth Olsen, who was reportedly paid $2.5 million. Facebook measured loyalty by the number of people who completed at least three episodes. 

In case you think the top programs are all female-driven, the most-watched single episode features a motorcycle-building organization run by a Army vet with a sleeve tattoo. Operation Combat Bikesaver, an episode of Returning the Favor, profiles a former Army engineer who runs a therapeutic program for veterans. It has more than 453,000 views. 

The show (as opposed to group) with the most comments is Confetti, an HQ Trivia-like live trivia game show.  

Facebook also said it was renewing four of its original shows for second seasons: Huda BossFive PointsSacred Lies, and Sorry For Your Loss

On the product side, Facebook said its Ad Breaks in videos are being widened to eligible Pages in 40 countries around the world, up from the five countries it started with in August. Watch will also be available worldwide on desktop computers and on Facebook Lite, a bandwidth-friendly version designed to suit emerging markets.

Originally published at 8 a.m. PT. 
Updated at 9:05 a.m. PT: With more detail.

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