Streaming Climbs To 48.5%, Per Last Lame Duck Edition Of Nielsen's 'Gauge'


Nielsen this morning released the June edition of its monthly "The Gauge" report showing that streaming has climbed to a 48.5% share of total TV viewing. The data is expected to be the last using old, supposedly inferior methods that will be recalibrated with the launch of the new TV season.

The report also showed broadcast -- with strong FIFA World Cup viewing on Fox and Telemundo, and ABC’s NBA Finals -- rising to a 19.8% share (vs. 18.5% a year ago), while cable fell to 19.5% (versus 23.4% a year ago).

Media-buying and -selling executives have complained for some time about the long delay of "The Gauge's" recalibration, which will use more accurate universe estimates provided by the Advertising Research Foundation's DASH service.

Some analysts suggest the recalibrated estimates will show streaming having less dominance against broadcast and cable vs. recent monthly Gauge reports.

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The latest edition shows streaming platform YouTube rising to a 13.5% share (vs. 12.8% a year ago), and Prime Video climbing to 4.2% (vs. 3.6%); Roku Channel to 3.0% (from 2.5%); and Peacock to 2.3% from 1.5%.

Netflix sank to 7.9% from 8.3%.

Looking at total TV viewing by media company, major legacy TV/streaming groups Walt Disney and Paramount fell to 9.6% and 6.8% (from 10.0% and 7.2%, respectively).

NBCUniversal-Versant Media rose to 9.1% from 7.8%.

Fox also grew to 7.4% from 6.9%.

Both Fox and NBC’s Peacock scored big results from the airing of the World Cup.

1 comment about "Streaming Climbs To 48.5%, Per Last Lame Duck Edition Of Nielsen's 'Gauge'".
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  1. Joshua Chasin from KnotSimpler, August 18, 2026 at 3:37 p.m.

    One point worth noting in the Gauge's gauging of broadcast/cable/streaming... while it includes streaming through OTT devices and Smart TVs, it does not include streaming on non-TV devices (i.e. computers, mobile devices.) So the excluded viewing likely skews to streaming as opposed to broadcast or cable.

    ___________
    (If you're going to say "all viewing on those devices is by definition streaming," note that Nielsen excludes e.g. YouTube TV from streaming because viewing linear TV via apps ends up in broadcast or cable. Presumably such viewing on non-TV devices would be, if included, similarly classified.)

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