NEW YORK—In the battle for viewing among the big TV and media players, Fox had a superb October, earning an 8.4% share of total TV viewing in Nielsen’s October Media Distributor Gauge. That was its highest share of TV viewing for the since Nielsen began releasing the data in November of 2023.
During October, Fox also notched the largest monthly increase among all reported media distributors, with overall viewing up 16% in October (+1.1 share points of TV viewing).
In the October rankings of TV viewing share by media company, The Walt Disney Co. was on top at 11.7%, followed by YouTube (10.6% of total TV viewing), NBCUniversal (9.2%), Paramount (9.2%) and Fox in fifth place. Sports and news programming drove increases in viewing for Fox, Disney and others during the month.
October’s TV landscape featured a wide range of compelling events that drew large audiences across broadcast and cable channels, leading multiplatform media distributors like Fox to thrive on the strength of diverse content offerings, Nielsen said in its explanation of the data.
On top of last month’s 69% bump in viewing, Fox broadcast affiliates were up another 16% in October, driven by sporting events including the NFL, college football, the Major League Baseball postseason and Games 1 and 2 of the World Series. From a cable-network perspective, election-related coverage boosted Fox News Channel to a 12% viewing increase in October, and FS1 shot up over 260%, due primarily to its National League Championship Series games. Fox also benefited from a 2.5% lift in Tubi viewing.
Disney also took advantage of its multiplatform capabilities and repeated as the top media company in October, adding 0.4 share points from September to notch 11.7% of overall TV. Disney was buoyed by a 7% increase in viewing to ABC broadcast affiliates as a result of NFL and college football, as well as the consistent performance of ABC World News Tonight With David Muir. Meanwhile, an 8% bump in viewership to ESPN, driven by both football and baseball, was the largest gain among Disney’s cable networks.
Among the 14 companies reported in the Media Distributor Gauge, nine of them exhibited monthly shifts of plus or minus 0.1 share point or less in October. An exception, however, was The Roku Channel, which tallied the second largest monthly increase among distributors with a 12% gain over September to lift the FAST service to a platform-best 1.8% share of TV.
The measurement month of October included four weeks: Sept. 30 through Oct. 27. Nielsen measurement weeks run Monday through Sunday.
