Broadcast television saw its largest viewing increase in more than four years in September, propelled by the return of football season, according to Nielsen’s latest “The Gauge” report.
Time spent watching broadcast TV jumped 20 percent compared to August, with broadcast TV accounting for the biggest sequential increase across all platforms. Nielsen attributed the increase to the start of the National Football League’s (NFL) regular season; NFL rights are shared across CBS Sports, Fox Sports and NBC Sports on Sundays, and split among other rights holders like Amazon’s Prime Video, the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN and NFL Network during other days of the week.
Fifteen NFL games across CBS, Fox and NBC ranked higher than August’s top telecast, with September’s biggest broadcast audience more than doubling the prior month’s leader. College football, which airs on the four main broadcast networks plus Nexstar-owned CW Network, also helped lift broadcast TV’s share during September.
Overall, broadcast’s share of total TV usage climbed 3.2 percentage points to 22.3 percent, putting it ahead of cable on an unrounded basis for the first time, Nielsen noted in its report.
Cable viewership also increased during September, up 11 percent for sports and 9 percent for news, Nielsen noted. ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” broadcasts dominated cable’s top telecasts, joined by NFL Network’s first international game of the season. News programming, led by continued political and global coverage, represented more than one-quarter of total cable viewing.
Younger viewers were a key factor in the September rebound for traditional television. Among adults aged 25 to 34, broadcast viewing surged 65 percent, while cable viewing rose 16 percent. The data suggested that younger audiences are reengaging with live sports as schedules expand across networks and platforms.
Taken together, traditional linear broadcast and cable channels accounted for 44.6 percent of all time spent with TV in September, compared with 45.2 percent of time spent with streaming platforms. With YouTube factored out, streaming’s TV share was just 32.6 percent across apps like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Peacock and others.
A few of those platforms were also boosted by the return of regular-season NFL games, with Prime Video posting its most-watched “Thursday Night Football” broadcast to date. The September 11 matchup between the Washington Commanders and Green Bay Packers drew more than 3 billion minutes of viewing, Nielsen noted.
Streaming activity softened slightly amid fewer new content releases. The number of titles exceeding one billion weekly viewing minutes fell from 18 in July to 10 in September, suggesting that streamers may be pacing high-profile launches ahead of the holiday season. Netflix’s “Wednesday” led all streaming titles with over 7 billion minutes viewed during the month, nearly doubling the next-highest title, Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters,” which logged 3.6 billion minutes.
Despite those hits, Netflix’s share of total TV viewing slipped 0.4 points to 8.3 percent. YouTube, though down 2 percent from August as younger viewers returned to school, remained the top streaming platform with 12.6 percent of total television watch time.
Nielsen’s September reporting period spanned four weeks from September 1 through September 28, following the industry-standard broadcast calendar.
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