Nielsen's The Gauge results for September continue to show strong gains for streaming viewership -- adding nearly two percentages points from August to a commanding, leading 36.9% share among persons two years of age and older.
Cable viewing is now at 33.8% -- dipping almost a full percentage point -- from 34.5% in August.
Broadcast viewing grew -- largely due to the new TV season programming -- to a 24.2% share from a 22.1% share.
Nielsen says broadcast showed the highest month-over-month increase -- 12.4%, driven by a 222% surge in sports viewing, which included NFL viewing.
Still, on a year-over-year basis, total broadcast viewing volume was down 7.1%.
Nielsen says television usage as a whole was up 2.4% in September compared to August.
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YouTube (including YouTube TV) continues to grow and is now the top streaming platform -- at a 8.0% share, up from 7.6% in August.
Netflix, which was tied with YouTube last month, dipped to 7.3% from 7.6%.
Hulu (including Hulu Live) also had a record high share -- 3.8%. It now sits in third place behind Netflix. Amazon Prime Video (in fourth place) stayed at a 2.9% share versus the month before. Year-over-year “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power” and “Thursday Night Football” drove a 34.7% viewing gain.
HBO Max had a 1.3% share, and was up year over year usage by 10% from large viewing of “House Of The Dragon” and “Game Of Thrones.”
In September, Nielsen said Pluto TV, a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, became the first FAST service to cross the 1% share mark.