• by Wayne Friedman , January 16, 2024

It's a rerun of sorts for broadcast and cable TV usage in December 2023 versus the year before -- with viewing losses down 6% and 10%, respectively, according to Nielsen.

For broadcast TV, December was down 4.3% from November 2023 in usage. Year-over-year, broadcast TV's viewing share for persons age two years and up sank to 23.5% (down 1.2 share points). 

Cable TV was slightly up in usage by 1.3% in December vs. November 2023 but year-over-year, its viewing share fell 2.7 share points to 28.2%.

Streaming platforms also grew a similar 1.2% in December versus the previous month. It still has a commanding 35.9% share of viewing. 

Among the top individual gainers, Netflix was up 6% in the month versus the previous month to total 7.7% share in TV usage. Highly viewed shows included “Young Sheldon” (which also ran on Max), and “Leave the World Behind”. Tubi also grew 6.6% to reach a 1.4% share.

Although YouTube slipped a bit to a 8.5% share, as a result of a 3.4% usage decline, it remained the top streaming platform.

Overall, Nielsen says, December was the second-highest month of TV viewing for 2023 and January 2023 was the highest.

In the “other” category -- content viewing not identified as original coming from a streaming platform, viewed through a cable set-top box and/or video-game console -- usage was up 1.8 share points to 12.5% of TV usage.