Nielsen: Broadcast Down 6%, Streaming Grows 31.8%
- by Wayne Friedman , February 16, 2023
While broadcast viewing got its usual boost in January from heavy NFL sports viewing, on a year-over-year basis it was down 6% from January 2022, according to Nielsen’s Gauge, which measures total day viewing by persons two years of age and up.
Broadcast content rose 2.1% in January from December, which gave it a 24.9% share.
Streaming maintained its industry-leading dominant 38.1% share -- up 1.2% from December. A year ago, in January 2022, streaming had a 28.9% share. That means year-over-year, time spent watching streaming content grew 31.8%.
YouTube maintained its leading position as the top individual streaming platform with a 8.6% share, followed by Netflix with 7.5%; Hulu, 3.5%; Amazon Prime Video, 2.9%; Disney+ 1.7%; Peacock, 1.0% and Pluto TV with 0.8%.
Disney+ dropped nearly 10% in viewing as a result of comparisons to December, when it benefited from holiday-film consumer viewing.
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Nielsen says virtual pay TV provider YouTube TV now makes up nearly 15% of total YouTube viewing, while Hulu Live, another virtual pay TV provider, was 9% of total Hulu’s share.
Cable TV stayed in second place to streaming with a 30.4% share -- virtually flat with December viewing.
Cable TV news, which continues to be the most watched of all content on cable platforms, slipped 4% month to month.
Nielsen says the biggest factor for cable was lower viewing of feature films -- down nearly 20%, on cable channels in January in comparison to the high holiday viewing of films in November and December.
If one tracks the Nielsen findings over time it is clear that streaming's gains have come largely at the expense of cable while broadcast TV has remained at almost the same levels as several years ago---despite month by month ups and downs caused mainly by the effects of sports viewing---especially in the fall. Two of the reasons for this are the very strong older age slant of most broadcast program genres--- old folks tend to be not only the heaviest users of TV but also the most traditional in their tastes content-wise.
A second and very important factor is the increase in homes getting over-the-air reception. These now account for about 15% of TV homes and they probably provide a much higher share of broadcast TV viewing. Even though many are also streamers over-the-air reception households have many fewer channels or content sources to select from compared to cable homes and, as a result, broadcast rating fragmentation in such homes is greatly, though not totally, reduced.
I might add that relatively new AVOD and FAST services have also spurred streaming's overall share gains and appear to account for about 30% of the recent usage tallies while "linear TV" content accessed via apps is also contributing to streaming's overall gains.
Gosh. 31.8% increase in streaming over a year!!! I can recall when it was growing by well over 100% .. like when it went from 1% to 2%. Dear reader, just be cautious when you see percentage growth figures when based on usage shares.