Weekly Viewing Time Rising On Netflix And Hulu
- by Wayne Friedman , January 21, 2020
Weekly time spent watching movies and TV series on Netflix and Hulu rose 7% -- or 20 minutes more -- in 2019 over the year before, according to the NPD Group.
Collectively, weekly time spent watching the two subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services grew to four hours/6 minutes from three hours/45 minutes in 2018.
Original TV shows on Netflix made up 43% of all content watched by either kid or adults -- with 37 total series -- compared to just 11% for Hulu Originals, with 18 shows. Virtually all consumers with subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu -- at 99.5% -- viewed at least one title in a given month in 2019.
For 2019, eMarketer estimated that 205.9 million people in the U.S. will view some content via subscription (OTT) services.
Accounting for multiple OTT services owned by consumers, the research company also says nearly 160 million OTT viewers watched Netflix, with 96.5 million for Amazon Prime Video; 75.8 million for Hulu; and 23.1 million for HBO Now
Interesting that they didn't break down these survey findings by service .Do we infer that both "gained" equally---or did Hulu outpace Netflix? Also, data from Nielsen---based on meter data--has indicated a higher percentage of viewing to non original fare for Netflix---but such info needs to be updated with each service dealt with separately. There's no doubt that SVOD usage is rising, especially with the introduction of Disney+ and shortly, other services such as that to be offered by Comcast. However, SVOD continues to trail well behind "linear TV" in the total time spent rankings and will have to significantly broaden its content menu to include sports, news and other fare available almost exclusively on "linear" before it sees the kinds of gains that are hoped for. The Disney and Comcast packages may alter this situation in favor of SVOD---but the extent of their impact remains to be seen.