Powered By Netflix, Streaming's Share Soars To 46% In June
- by Wayne Friedman , Today
June streaming television results strongly benefited from leading premium streaming service Netflix -- which leaped 13.5% in viewing versus May to a 8.5% viewing share, according to Nielsen’s Total TV/Streaming Snapshot.
This increase was largely driven by the most-viewed original streaming TV series in the month -- Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia,” with a dominant 8.7 billion viewing minutes.
Netflix's results were so strong that the subscription video platform accounted for 42% of streaming’s total monthly gain.
Year-over-year -- with more competition from other streaming platforms (and YouTube) compared to 11 major streamers -- Netflix is basically flat versus the same month a year ago (8.4%)
Looking at overall streaming viewing from all platforms, usage grew to a 46% share -- a 5.4% rise from May. Looking year-over-year, all major streaming platforms are 14% higher (versus a 40.3% share in May 2024).
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Traditionally, summer viewing is lower. Broadcast viewing declined 10% to an 18.5% share (versus a 20.5% share over the same period in 2024) with cable TV down 14% to 23.4% (from 27.2% share).
Collectively, legacy TV platforms share (broadcast and cable) are now at a 41.9% share versus 47.7% a year ago -- a decline of 12% compared to a year ago.
The NBA was a positive factor in June’s broadcast results. A closely competitive, full seven-game series on ABC helped boost sports on broadcast TV by 17% over May’s results.
Cable also benefited from the NBA's earlier Conference Finals airings on ESPN and TNT. In addition, cable TV news viewing climbed 12% versus May.
These results helped the cable TV network remain essentially flat with the month of May.
Peacock posted a 13.4% gain in the month --- the second-highest among all streamers. The NBC streamer is also 25% higher in share (to 1.5%) versus a year ago, thanks to a new season of its popular “Love Island USA” debuted pulling 4.4 million viewing minutes.
Leading platform YouTube continued its overall streaming leadership with a 12.8% share -- up 29% versus the year before, when it was 9.9%.
YouTube had a 2.5% share in May 2025.
What's interesting about the trending, Wayne, is how the linear TV interests are slowly increasing their share of streaming viewing. It's risen to about 27-28% and that's just viewing time. The ad revenue picture is probably more favorable. It remains to be seen whether linesr TV managements will make the right decisions and increase their footprint in streaming to a position like they had in cable.
There's a problem for the linear TV companies though, even going whole hog into streaming.
Once upon a time there was broadcast. Basically, you put a big stick in a field, ran ads, and cashed checks. Your broadcast license-- allocating you exclusive access to spectrum space-- was a license to print money. Access to consumers was a scarce commodity and you owne a nice chunk of it.
Then cable came around. Uh oh-- this can't be good! "instead of one in 7 channels, now I'm one of 36!" Only cable brought must-carry and retransmission fees, and now the broadcasters got PAID for the right to carry them. Distribution went from basically free to a profit center. You made money before you even sold a spot.
But now... streaming. THere is no cap on consumer access; all you need is bandwidth, which isn't capped or licensed by the government. Now, instead of getting paid by the company with the cable or fiber, the networks have to bear bandwidth costs to get their shows (and ads) into my house. The migration from cable to streaming turns distribution from a preofit center to a cost center.
At the same time, no one has more bandwidth than companies lilke Google, Amazon, or Apple. These companies are 10X the size of the traditional programmers, and they may not even have to make money on TV. Personally, I buy most of the streaming services for business reasons, but there's one I know I'm NEVER going to cancel-- Prime. And the reason I'll never cancel Prime is, free shipping. How does Paramount or Comcast compete with free shipping? We got Apple TV because we bought a phone.
So yeah, they have to embrace streaming, simply because tyou don't get to choose the mode of distribution by which consiumers access your content. Just ask record companies. And newspapers. But the shift from cable to streaming fundsmentally and permanently alters the economics of the TV business. Broadcasting I Love Lucy to my living room in 1957 was a way better economic proposition than streaming Law & Order: SVU to me in 22025.
Josh, from almost the outset, the broadcast TV stations--especially in the larger markets-- made huge profits while the national networks functioned as loss leaders averaging about a 6% pre-tax profit. Which was fine as their O&O TV stations were mqaking a mint.When cable came along, most channels lost money until penetration increased and there was a demosstrable demand for them. At which point they began to earn major "carriage fees" from the cable systems and, later, the satellite disrtibutors. But the TV stations and broadcast TV networks remained almost 100% ad revenue reliant until they finally demanded equal treatment and began to earn re-transmission fees about 20 years ago. Enter streaming and you have a plethora of business plans---Ad-free SVODS, plus hibrid AVODs and FASTs--in the latter case a return to the long abandoned 1950s-60s TV business model.
While linear TV viewing has declined significantly it still accounts for about 2.4 hours per adult daily while streaming gets about the same. But only 60-70% of streaming is ad-supported and it offers many fewer commercials per hour. So there's a problem. With only about 1.5 hours of ad-supported streaming being consumed per adult, while cable and broadcast TV used to make their profits based on a daily intake of 4.5 hours daily, how can all of the streaming services make money? There isn't enough viewing to suppport them all.
With the linear TV interests preparing to sell off their least profitable cable channels and diving into streaming ventures the issue is clearly in doubt. Will they all survive or will we see major mergers and a huge shakeout not only of cable channels but many FASTs and AVODs. Also, will the national advertisers change their ways and drop their penchant for big volume, non-targeted upfront buys. And how will all of the deals be measured--by whom?
It should be a most interesting transformation to watch.