YouTube leapfrogged the Walt Disney Company on Nielsen’s monthly Media Distributor Gauge for the second time since the measurement firm began releasing the report nearly two years ago.
YouTube captured 11.6 percent of all time spent with TV in February, the report released on Tuesday showed, up from 10.8 percent it held in January and enough to top Disney’s broadcast and cable networks and streaming services. When Nielsen began counting time spent on TV by media firms, YouTube had 7.9 percent share, first logged in November 2023.
By comparison, Disney accounted for 10 percent of all time spent with TV in February, the Nielsen report said. It had 12 percent of time spent with TV the prior month; the difference between January and February was primarily due to the end of college football and NFL games on Disney-owned channels and platforms for the season. Disney’s media products include the ABC broadcast network; sports channel ESPN; cable networks FX, FXX, Freeform and National Geographic; and the streaming services ESPN Plus, Disney Plus and Hulu.
One reason why YouTube gained so much ground: Older TV viewers are starting to incorporate more YouTube streaming into their daily TV diets. YouTube viewers who are 65 or older have nearly doubled in the last two years, Nielsen said, accounting for 15.4 percent of the streamer’s domestic audience — nearly on par with young viewers between the ages of 2 and 11, which account for 16.9 percent of YouTube’s audience.
Collectively, the audience between 18 and 64 years old remains YouTube’s biggest, accounting for more than three-fifths of the platform’s viewers, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by The Desk.
Meanwhile, Fox Corporation gained ground on the Media Distributor Gauge thanks to its telecast of Super Bowl LIX in February, which aired on its broadcast network, Spanish channel Fox Deportes and free, ad-supported streamer Tubi. Fox had 8.3 percent of all time spent with TV last month, up from 7.6 percent in January and leapfrogging Netflix and Paramount and NBC Universal, which ranked higher the prior month.
That said, the difference between Fox, Netflix, Paramount and NBC Universal was close — just 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points, the report showed. Netflix and Paramount tied with 8.2 percent of all time spent with TV, while NBC Universal had an 8.1 percent share.
Warner Bros Discovery — which operates the Warner portfolio of cable networks (CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO), streaming services Max and Discovery Plus, and the Discovery Networks portfolio of channels (Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel), had a 6.1 percent share of time spent with TV, unchanged from the prior month. Amazon captured 3.5 percent of TV time in February, down from 3.7.
Across pure broadcast networks, the E. W. Scripps Company charted with 2.1 percent of time spent with TV in February, up slightly from 2 percent in January; Scripps owns the Ion broadcast network; multicast channels Laff, Bounce and Grit; streaming network Scripps News and dozens of local TV stations across the country. Weigel Broadcasting, which owns the Me TV portfolio of multicast networks along with others like Heroes & Icons and Story Television, captured 1.3 percent of time spent with TV, unchanged from January. Hallmark and AMC Networks were unchanged with 1 percent and 0.8 percent of TV share respectively.
