• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

With the return of strong viewership in TV football content, legacy TV companies Walt Disney and Fox posted year-over-year growth in August 2025, per Nielsen’s Media Distributor Index.

Disney grew 2% to a (9.5%) total day viewing share of all its platforms for persons two years of age and up.

Fox added 10% (to a 6.7% share) in August versus a year ago, while Paramount+ was flat at 7.1%.

NBCUniversal's share was cut nearly in half due to unfavorable comparisons to the year-ago period, when it had strong Olympic viewership in August.

NBCU sank to a 7.6% share from a 13.4% share a year ago.

Compared to a year ago, college football and NFL pre-season content gained 4% for ABC affiliates, and was 25% higher for ESPN and 14% higher for Fox affiliates.

YouTube continued its strong growth -- up 24% versus a year ago (to a leading 13.1% share) in the Media Distributor index.

Netflix added 10% to an 8.7% share, and Amazon was up 22% to a 3.9% share.

Warner Bros. Discovery continued to decline -- down 16% to a 5.8% share.

Disney had the best results among legacy, live/linear TV network focused media companies -- shifting more viewing to streaming platforms from live, linear TV channels. The mouse house gets 47.4% of its overall TV viewing via its streaming platform and 52.6% via linear.

The next-highest result was for Fox (32.8% streaming/67.2% linear) followed by Paramount (28.2%/71.8%), WBD (24.2%/75.9%) and NBCU (18.4%/81.6%).