NEW YORK—New data from Nielsen’s The Gauge shows that May was a good month for streaming, with streaming growing its market share by 2.5 share points to a 36.4% share of time spent watching TV in May as overall TV viewing declined for the fourth straight month.
Viewing declines are typical this time of year, Nielsen said. Total TV usage in the U.S. fell in May 4.4% from April. In May, time spent watching TV declined 2.7% compared to May of 2022.
Nielsen’s The Gauge, which offers a monthly snapshot of total broadcast, cable and streaming consumption that occurs via television, also found that 31.1% of TV viewing was spent watching cable content, and 22.8% with broadcast content. On a year-over-year basis, broadcast viewing was down 5.6% (-1.7 share points), and cable viewing was down 13.7% (-5.4 share points).
Nielsen said that a technical enhancement in the way it calculates viewing was a factor in the monthly uptick but that approximately half of the increase was a reflection of viewing behavior alone.
Nielsen also reported data for the Roku Channel for the first time. Representing 1.1% of TV usage in May, the Roku Channel is the latest streaming service, and third free ad-supported television (FAST) service, to get enough viewers to be included in The Gauge's coverage.
Combined, the three FAST services that are independently reported in The Gauge (Pluto TV, Tubi TV, Roku Channel) are each comparable in usage to Peacock and HBO Max, and in aggregate, accounted for 3.3% of TV time this month, Nielsen said.
In terms of other streaming services, Nielsen reported that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video each gained momentum in May, posting usage gains of 9.2% (+1.0 share points) and 5.1% (+0.3 share points), respectively.
Roughly half of Netflix's increase was due to the technical enhancement, coupled with the fact that the top three streaming titles this month were Netflix Originals, including "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story" (5.4 billion viewing minutes), "A Man Called Otto" (3.1 billion) and "The Mother" (3.0 billion).
Prime Video benefited from the strength of its original series "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Citadel", which combined for 2.7 billion viewing minutes. YouTube maintained its stance as the top streaming platform for the fourth consecutive month, gaining 0.4 share points in May (0.9% usage increase) to account for 8.5% of TV viewing.
Viewing via MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) and vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) streaming apps represented 5.5% of total television use in May, including 1.3% attributed to YouTube TV, and 0.4% to Hulu Live. Compared with May 2022, overall streaming consumption has increased by more than 30%, and streaming's share of TV has risen 8.2 share points.
Broadcast and cable viewing each fell 5.5% and 5.4%, respectively, in May versus April, and each surrendered 0.3 share points, Nielsen said.
Broadcast sports viewing was down 25% in May compared with April, and the genre represented 7.9% of broadcast's 22.8% share. However, the Kentucky Derby still secured the top broadcast program for the month, drawing 14.5 million viewers.
By contrast, cable sports viewership rose 12% in May. The increase was driven by the extensive coverage of the NBA Finals on ESPN and TNT, which also accounted for the top four cable programs this month. Additionally, despite the traction that the May 10 CNN Town Hall generated, cable news viewing fell more than 11% from April.
