NEW YORK—A new report from Nielsen’s The Gauge shows the NCAA men’s basketball tournament helped drive cable’s traditional March increase, the Oscars on ABC stood out for broadcast and, in a competitive month of high-profile streaming releases, the top programs in March were represented by seven different streaming platforms.
However, time spent watching TV in March was down 6% compared to February, The Gauge noted.
While the report highlighted seasonal viewing shifts during the month, such as strong cable viewing driven by college basketball, it also showed the ongoing rise of the popularity of streaming platforms. With 43.8% of TV usage in March, the streaming category increased its share of the viewing pie versus February (up 0.3 share points).
March was also an exceptionally competitive month for streaming services as prominent new releases drove viewership across a number of platforms. Most notably—and for the first time ever in a monthly Gauge report—the 10 most-watched streaming titles in March were distributed by seven different platforms: Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, Netflix and Apple TV+.
Now included under Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming, Max notched the largest month-over-month increase among streaming services and jumped 6% in March, largely on the strength of “The White Lotus.” Meanwhile, YouTube achieved a new platform record for a second consecutive month with 12.0% of total TV watch-time (+0.4 share pt.), despite slightly lower viewing levels compared to February, the report explained.
Cable’s share of viewing benefited from college basketball’s favorite time of year: March Madness. Cable climbed to 24.0% of TV usage (+0.8 pt.), buoyed by a 29% lift in cable sports viewing and another strong month of cable news viewership. Atop the most-watched cable sports telecasts in March were NCAA Men’s Elite Eight games between Alabama-Duke and Texas Tech-Florida on TBS. Meanwhile, cable news programs accounted for seven of the top 10 cable telecasts, led by Fox News Channel’s coverage of the presidential address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, which drew 11 million viewers on the network and over 36 million viewers in total.
The bright spot for the broadcast category this month was ABC’s presentation of The Oscars on March 2, which was the most-watched program in March with 20.3 million viewers across ABC and the simulcast on Hulu.
The report stressed that this illustrated the latest success of multiplatform distribution. Similar to February’s Super Bowl on Fox and Tubi, viewers who streamed “Hollywood’s Biggest Night” on Hulu were three times as likely to be 18-34 and twice as likely to be 35-49 compared with those who watched via other means, underscoring the effectiveness of cross-channel content availability with younger audience demographics, the researchers explained.
Across the rest of the broadcast category, scripted dramas accounted for 28% of its total viewing in March. Episodes of the CBS drama “Tracker” represented five of the top 10 broadcast telecasts, with each averaging over 10 million viewers (L+7) despite stiff competition from several March Madness games. The absence of football was evident this month, however, as broadcast viewership fell by 9% versus February to finish the month at 20.5% of TV.
Nielsen also reported that viewing totals among the following streaming services have been aggregated into a single distributor total to better represent these companies as they go to market: Paramount+ and Pluto are represented as “Paramount Streaming," Max and Discovery+ are represented as “Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming" and Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ are represented as “Disney Streaming” (since January 2025).
Nielsen’s March 2025 interval ran from Feb. 25 through March 30. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar with measurement weeks that run Monday through Sunday.
