Broadcasting rebounded in September as the NFL and college football generated a 20% month-over-month audience increase – compared to about 3% for all TV – marking the largest monthly increase in volume and share for any category in Nielsen’s monthly Gauge reports since tracking began in May 2021.
The category ended the month with 22.3% of overall TV viewing, putting it ahead of cable on an unrounded basis for the first time ever. Sports viewership tripled to account for 33% of total broadcasts in September, up from 11% in August. 15 telecasts – all of which were NFL games on CBS, FOX and NBC – surpassed last month’s most-watched telecast, with September’s largest audience more than doubling.
Cable also finished the month with a 22.3% share, driven by a 9% increase in news viewership, which accounts for more than a quarter of the category’s audience total, and an 11% increase in sports viewership. Cable’s top five broadcasts this month included four Monday Night Football games on ESPN, as well as the first international NFL game of the season on NFL Network.
Audience gains for broadcast and cable were primarily driven by younger audiences, with the largest monthly increases coming from 25-34 year olds. Viewing among this group increased by 65% and cable viewing by 16%.
Despite these gains, streaming continued to dominate TV usage, accounting for 45.2% of total viewing time in September. However, the category saw fewer billion-minute titles in Nielsen’s weekly streaming Top 10, where a busy streaming month of July saw 18 titles surpass the billion-minute weekly listening mark, compared to 10 titles in September.
Once countered, YouTube led the pack with a 12.6% share. The 2% drop from one month to the next is due to the impact of the return to school of young people aged 6 to 17. Netflix also felt the impact, with its share falling to 8.3%. However, “Wednesday” dominated the streaming titles with more than 7 billion minutes watched during the month, nearly double its movie “KPOP Demon Hunters,” which attracted 3.6 billion minutes and took second place.
Disney finished third with a 4.5% overall share across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, while Prime Video held steady in fourth with 3.9%. The latter notched its most-watched NFL Thursday Night Football game of all time on the platform on September 11, as the Commanders-Packers game generated more than 3 billion minutes viewed.
The rest of the list included The Roku Channel at 2.8%, Tubi at 2.1%, Paramount at 2% on Paramount+ and Pluto TV, Peacock at 1.4% and Warner Bros. Discovery at 1.3%.
