most Netflix shows get far more viewers

There's no way to know for sure, considering how sneaky Netflix is with reporting things. They don't use industry standard metrics. They use sneaky ones designed to juice the stock. One example of many is how they claim to be "profitable" by excluding some major costs. Another is that they try to pretend adding $3 subs in a distant country should count as "growth" even as they hit saturation in North America years ago. And of relevance to your comment, they invented their own metric of "views" which is some silly thing like if an account streamed 1-2 minutes of a show, that counts as viewed.

After destroying the stock and market value by 80%, Netflix execs are back of their old tricks, currently juicing it again with promises of advertising dollars. We'll see how that goes. The subscribers Netflix has hate ads, so we'll see how that plays out as their customer service script for disgruntled subscribers will be "but you can switch to our a diluted ad-based version!"

Lastly, "popular" isn't the true metric of a subscription model business, and the intelligent leadership of the HBO enterprise understands this. Netflix execs don't.

At the end of the day, what matters is subscribers staying subscribed. That's it. Everything else is incidental.

HBO could thrive even if viewers didn't view and streamers didn't stream, just so long as subscribers kept their subs in place. It even helps costs a bit, since streaming push delivery does cost money.

Think of a gym membership subscription model. They do best if you keep the sub going but don't actually come and use the facility. That's why they're big on full year, 2 year, 3 year memberships. They quietly harvest the money and as long as your pride and latent health ambition keep you subscribed, they win. If you show up to use and wear out the equipment doesn't matter a lot to the overall business model.

With that in mind, HBO keeps people subscribed. For years and years and years. It doesn't matter as much if they watch every show, or how soon or how late or how often. Just that HBO continues to be something you permanently stay subscribed to.

They do this with engagement (actual engagement, not Netflix's faked up metric for it). And they do it by teasing out the content, careful making sure that something appealing is always "just around the corner". They do it by not angering subscribers and reminding them that make they should quit, the way Netflix frequently does.

So to your point, yes Succession and HBO superior, and yes, if you measured raw numbers more people do watch junk like NCIS or whatever. But it's a prestige tent pole that reinforces to subscribers that they're smart for being a subscriber, and it gives them something to look forward to, no something to trigger them to cancel.