NEW YORK—Nielsen’s monthly snapshot of total TV viewing for February 2022 found that sports viewing drove broadcast TV to a higher weekly share of viewing in the first week of February and that the war in Ukraine produced a spike in cable and broadcast TV news viewing.
Overall, however, broadcast TV’s share of total viewing declined slightly from 26.4% in January of 2022 to 26.0%, while while cable TV’s share held steady at 36.4% (versus 36.5% in January) and streaming garnered a 28.7% share of total viewing (versus 28.9% in January).
Nielsen’s The Gauge for February of 2022 found that cable viewing increased 54% during the last week of February, as interest in the war in Ukraine helped news gain one-fourth of all cable consumption, representing a 16.5% overall month to month increase. Comparatively, broadcast news increased by 6% in the final week of the month, elevating the genre to the second-largest behind drama.
The new Nielsen data also showed that broadcast television gained its highest weekly share of viewing since October 2021 at 28.7% in the first week of February, primarily off the heels of a compelling Super Bowl, which accounted for 39% of total broadcast viewership during the week of February 7.
Overall sports programming viewership increased during the Winter Olympics, capturing 20% and 23% of total broadcast usage during the weeks of February 1 and February 14, respectively.
Despite the sports-induced broadcast viewership increase seen in February, total television viewing was down 5.7% from January, below the 5% average decrease over the past five years.
The "Other" category—which is reflective of video game usage—gained almost a full share point due to increased time consumers spent gaming during the Presidents' Day holiday and other winter breaks in the U.S.
Among the streamers, Netflix led with 6.6%, followed by YouTube (5.7% share) and Hulu (3.0%).
More data is available here.
