• by Wayne Friedman , February 25, 2025

TV and streaming viewing grew 5% in January versus December, largely due to end-of-season sports programming and big cable TV news viewership gains, according to Nielsen.

In the wake of highly viewed Presidential election content in the last months of 2024, cable TV news networks were up 26% overall versus December, with MSNBC adding 26%, Fox News Channel up 29% and CNN up 39%.

Fox News Channel helped Fox Corp. overall rise to a company-wide 12% in the month, ending with 7.6% share for the month -- in sixth place among all media companies for the Nielsen Media Distributor measure.

The index amasses total viewership for a media company for all its TV network/streaming platforms.

The overall media distributor leader continued to be Walt Disney, accounting for a 12% share of time spent watching TV -- the best result among all TV media companies since the measure debuted in November 2023. Disney was at a 11.2% share in December.

College football playoffs in the early days of the month on ESPN and ABC Television Network also boosted Disney. For its part, ESPN grew its viewership 84% versus December.

After Disney on the list was YouTube with a 10.8% share -- slightly down from 11.1% in December.

Netflix was the strongest individual premium streaming platform again this month, with a 8.6% share (8.5% in December) -- fourth-highest among all the companies. Like Disney, Netflix registered its best result since the index started up.