NEW YORK—The ongoing shift towards streaming media among TV audiences boosted streaming audiences to record levels in Dec. of 2022, with time spent watching streaming content up 46.1% on a yearly basis, according to Nielsen’s snapshot of TV viewing, The Gauge.
Overall streaming gained 10.4 share points, climbing from 27.7% in Dec. of 2021 to 38.1% of total TV usage in Dec. of 2022.
In contrast, broadcast usage was down 3.7% from November, and the category lost a share point to finish at 24.7% of total television, Nielsen said.
The decline to broadcast viewing was driven by a sharp decrease in viewing to the general drama genre (-20%), and broadcast sports (-12.3%). Broadcast viewing in December was fairly flat compared with one year ago (+0.3%), and the category lost 1.4 share points compared to Dec. of 2021.
Cable viewing declined 2.4% versus November to end the month with a 30.9% share of TV. The changes in cable were driven by a 10.2% drop to cable news viewing, and the feature film genre, which jumped nearly 5% to 22.1% of cable viewing. On a year-over-year basis, time spent watching cable content declined 12% and the category lost 6.4 share points, Nielsen said.
Overall TV viewing in the U.S. remained high in December, continuing momentum from November when time spent watching television soared 7.8% from the month prior. Similar to November 2022, December also recorded five days with over 100 billion minutes of TV viewing, including two of the top 10 most-watched days of television in 2022 (December 18 and December 25).
While December's TV usage was fairly flat on a monthly basis, the slight 0.3% increase gave it an edge over November to solidify it as the second-highest month in overall TV consumption in 2022, behind January.
Similar to overall TV usage, December streaming usage was nearly even with November (+0.2%) and represented 38.1% of TV, losing one-tenth of a share point due to rounding.
In another streaming milestone, Peacock made its debut in The Gauge this month, initiating coverage with a 1.0% share of TV and consistent growth demonstrated across previous measurement intervals, Nielsen reported.
Notable changes in viewing among other streaming platforms included:
- Viewing on HBO Max climbed by 18.1%—the largest usage increase across all named streaming platforms in The Gauge this month—and represented 1.4% of total TV consumption (+0.2 share pts.).
- Netflix and YouTube each lost one-tenth of a share point vs. November, finishing at 7.5% and 8.7% of television, respectively.
- Hulu usage was down 11% in December, which translated to 3.4% of TV (-0.4 share pts.).
- Viewing of linear television on MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) and vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) apps represented 5.3% of total television usage and 14.0% of streaming usage in December (compared with 5.8% and 15.2%, respectively, in November). YouTube TV accounted for 14.3% of YouTube viewing (1.2 share points), and Hulu Live made up 10.1% of Hulu viewing (0.3 share points). Broadcast and cable content viewed through linear streaming apps also credits the respective category.
