A surge in viewership to premium live sports lifted the total share of time spent with broadcast and cable networks during Nielsen’s October measurement month, the company affirmed on Tuesday.
The trend was largely driven by live games from the National Football League (NFL) on broadcast networks CBS, Fox and ABC, plus simulcasts of games on ABC from ESPN, which lifted broadcast TV’s share to 22.9 percent during the measurement month that ran from September 29 to October 26.
The NFL drove “a massive resurgent in broadcast viewing,” with a sequential increase of 4.3 percent compared to the September measurement period, Nielsen said in a statement. The majority of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) World Series games took place during the November measurement period.
Cable TV, meanwhile, remained relatively unchanged, accounting for 22.2 percent of time spent with TV on account of higher interest in premium live sports and cable news. Although not specifically cited in Nielsen’s report, cable appeared to benefit from the MLB playoffs on Fox Sports 1 and TBS.
Together, broadcast and cable had 45.1 percent of time spent with TV, putting it on near-even footing with streaming apps and platforms, which had a 32.8 percent share with YouTube factored out. YouTube included, streaming’s share of TV time rose to 45.7 percent. YouTube does not license or produce television programming comparable to traditional TV networks or streaming apps like Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and others, and their inclusion in the report is a point of controversy.
Netflix remained the top app with the most similarity to traditional TV, capturing 8 percent of time spent with TV, down slightly from the 8.3 percent Netflix captured the prior month. Disney’s three streaming services — Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu — accounted for 4.8 percent of time spent with TV in October, up 0.3 percent.
Streaming services that offer live NFL games saw the same uptick in usage during October as broadcast and cable networks that did the same. Peacock saw a 19 percent lift in viewership, Nielsen said, while Paramount had an 8 percent lift. Peacock offers Sunday Night Football games, while Paramount streams regional and national-window games from local CBS stations and affiliates.
Prime Video, which has Thursday Night Football, saw its viewership increase 3 percentage points on football game days in October, Nielsen said.
Broadcast networks and their respective streaming apps also benefitted from the continuation of fall TV season debuts during October, with new episodes of “Tracker,” “Matlock,” “NCIS,” “High Potential” and “Chicago Fire” airing on CBS, ABC and NBC respectively.
Overall TV usage climbed 1.3 percent in October compared to the prior month, Nielsen affirmed.
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