October TV Viewing Up 2.8% Vs. A Year Ago, Driven by Streaming

• by Wayne Friedman , 7 hours ago

Overall October TV usage -- from all legacy and digital platforms -- is now 2.8% higher versus a year ago, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge measure of total day persons two years and older.  Streaming is the major reason for the increase.

Streaming platforms rocketed up 35.1% versus the same month one year ago, with the category gaining 8.9 share points -- to a leading 37.3% share. Cable TV is at 32.9% share, while broadcast is at 26.0%.

Looking at the performance of individual streamers and connected TV (CTV) platforms, results continue to show major gains year-over-year.

YouTube (including YouTube TV) grew 50.1% to an overall 8.5% share, followed by Hulu (including Hulu+Live TV), which added 28.3% to land at 4.0% share; Amazon Prime Video, up 35% to 2.8%; and Disney+ up 46.5%, to 2.0% share.

The biggest subscription video-on-demand platform, Netflix, grew 9.1% to land at 7.2% share.

Cable continues to see major declines year-over-year -- down 8.6% in viewing volume, with a loss of 4.1 share points (to a 32.9% share).

Broadcast viewing has not fallen as steeply -- down 6.2% and losing 2.5 share points (to 26.% share).

Still, broadcast has shown some positive trends, growing 10% in viewing volume from September.

Cable TV has remained fairly flat, slipping 0.7% versus the previous month.

Looking at individual program categories, broadcast sports viewing in October grew 19% vs. September, accounting for over 25% of broadcast usage. General Drama viewing climbed 42%, registering a 27% viewing usage share.

Broadcast news viewing is 15% higher than a year ago.

Although cable viewing is down overall year-over-year, cable TV news and cable tv sports programming were up 8.4% and 4.8% versus the same month a year ago.