NEW YORK—Time spent watching TV in November reached a nine-month high as streaming grabbed a record share of TV viewing, accounting for 41.6% viewing, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge.
Overall, viewing levels increased 5% from October to record the largest monthly viewing total since February, Nielsen said, with sports, the presidential election and livestreaming driving increases.
Notably, the November report, which covered Oct. 28 through Nov. 24, achieved growth even though it didn’t include the typical Thanksgiving Day holiday surge in TV viewing. That interval will be included in the December report, Nielsen said.
Broadcast viewing in November was up 3% and accounted for 23.7% of time spent watching TV. The first week of the interval was the most dominant for over-the-air TV as it featured Games 3, 4 and 5 of the World Series on Fox, as well as the usual slate of NFL and college football games. The final three World Series games totaled over 10 billion viewing minutes combined, and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 drew 18.2 million viewers to make it the sixth-most-watched broadcast telecast in this interval. This more concentrated week of broadcast sports events lifted the category to a peak share of 24.9% of TV in the first week of the month, and helped increase broadcast sports viewing by 34% from October.
Coverage of the presidential election drove viewing increases in the second week of the month, most notably for cable. While cable ultimately finished with a 25% share of viewing in November, its share during the week of the election jumped to 26.5%, with much of the increase attributable to cable news. Interestingly, cable news viewing was up just 1% month over month, but climbed from 36 billion viewing minutes to 48 billion viewing minutes between weeks one and two (up 32%) to give it the boost in share, Nielsen said.
Streaming viewership increased 7.6% in the November interval and the category posted a record share of TV with 41.6% (up 1.1 share points). Some of this increase can be attributed to viewers seeking solace from the atypical, election-fueled news cycle covered by many traditional TV networks, and was also illustrated by the streaming category reaching 42.6% of TV viewing during the third week of the interval, The Gauge report noted.
Netflix also exhibited peak viewership during week three when it hit 8.5% of TV (compared to its overall monthly share of 7.7%). This peak for Netflix coincides with the livestreamed Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, and was also fueled by viewing of original series “The Lincoln Lawyer,” which was the most-watched streaming program this interval with 3.9 billion viewing minutes.
The Gauge report also found that three streaming services notched platform-best shares of TV in November, including The Roku Channel (up 12% to 1.9% share of TV viewing), Prime Video (up 10% to 3.7% of TV), and YouTube, which secured a new category record with 10.8% of TV. Peacock, while short of its Olympics-driven platform record, still drew the largest monthly increase among streamers for 1.5% of TV (+0.2 share points). Peacock’s considerable increase was partially due to “Despicable Me 4,” which drove 1.5 billion viewing minutes and a 58% increase in kids viewing on the platform.
