• by Wayne Friedman , November 21, 2023

NFL, college football, and other sports programming boosted overall broadcast viewing again for another month -- October -- while streaming continued to maintain a stable leadership position.

Streaming was at a 36.6% share, with broadcast at a 24.6% share, according to Nielsen’s streaming and live, linear TV measure of total day viewing of persons two years of age and up. The previous month, streaming had a 37.5% share, with broadcast at 23.0%.

Although cable also benefited from sports programming (up 19%) and news (17% higher) from the year-ago period -- to hit an overall 29.5% share -- cable was still down in the month from a 29.8% in September.

Nielsen says cable is now at its lowest share ever for this measure.

Looking at individual streamers, YouTube crept up to a 9.1% share (vs. 9.0% in September), while Netflix sank to a half a percentage point at 7.2% (vs. 7.8% in the previous month), Prime Video maintained its 3.6% level and Hulu dipped to a 3.1% (from 3.6%).

Although Netflix’s overall numbers dropped compared to September, the premium subscription service commanded eight of top 10 monthly streaming titles.

Live streaming app viewing -- through legacy pay TV companies -- rose in share to a 6.4% from 5.7%.

Pay TV providers have offered streamers such as the independent Netflix and other small, niche streaming services, to consumers for some time.

In September, Walt Disney made a groundbreaking decision to allow Charter Communications to sell a new, high-profile, full-service streaming platform under Disney’s ESPN brand name as part of its standard cable TV networks package to consumers.