T - Television usage dips in February - but streaming keeps taking up TV time

2023-03-19 10:32:06 ET

Television usage overall fell in February, showing some typical seasonality - but streaming continued taking up a bigger share of that consumption, rising 1.5 percentage points to take a top share of more than 34% of TV usage.

Overall TV consumption fell 5.1% in February vs. January, according to " The Gauge " from Nielsen, the ratings firm's monthly overall look at TV delivery platforms.

That reflected a lower amount of high-demand content - in particular a comedown from the NFL playoffs in January - and consumption dropped across broadcast viewing (down 9.2%), cable viewing (down 5.7%) and streaming (down fractionally).

Streaming, though grew its share of TV usage to a record 34.3%. (Streaming had a 38.1% share of TV usage in January , though Nielsen has adjusted its methodology to remove viewing throgh MVPD and vMVPD streaming apps - like YouTube TV ( NASDAQ: GOOG ) ( NASDAQ: GOOGL ), Hulu Live ( NYSE: DIS ) ( CMCSA ), DirecTV ( T ), and Charter/Spectrum ( CHTR ) - from the streaming category, since viewing of that content has also always been reflected either in broadcast or cable, and the firm is looking to avoid double-counting.) Adjusting for the live programming change, streaming boosted its share of TV usage to 34.3% from 32.8%.

With the shares adjusted, much of the relative gain fell to "other usage" - heavily videogaming, but also including such uses as viewing video discs - which rose to 11.7% share from the prior month's 6.6% share (but fell from 11.9% in adjusted terms).

Still dropping share in any terms, though, were Cable (which fell to 30.2% share from the prior month's 30.4%), and Broadcast (which dipped to 23.8% share from the previous 24.9%).

Turning to individual streaming platforms, YouTube ( GOOG ) ( GOOGL ) held onto the biggest single-company share, with 7.9% (that's down on a headline basis from last month's 8.6%, but up from a YouTube TV-adjusted 7.3%). Netflix ( NASDAQ: NFLX ) held on as the second-biggest share, with 7.3% down from last month's 7.5%.

Hulu ( DIS ) ( CMCSA ) was third again; it grew share on a basis adjusted for Hulu + Live TV, but as reported its share was 3.3%, down from last month's 3.5%. Amazon Prime Video ( NASDAQ: AMZN ) continued fractional gains, rising to 3.0% from the previous 2.9%.

Disney+ ( DIS ) boosted its share to 1.8% from 1.7%; HBO Max ( WBD ) and Peacock ( CMCSA ) were flat at 1.3% and 1.0% respectively; and Pluto TV ( PARA ) ( PARAA ) dipped just a bit to 0.7% from 0.8%. Pluto was passed, though, by another free ad-supported television entrant to the chart, Tubi TV ( FOX ) ( FOXA ), which took 1.0% share.

"Other streaming" (including smaller services like Crackle ( CSSE ) as well as linear streamers like Spectrum ( CHTR ), DirecTV and Sling TV ( DISH )), having lost Tubi from its everybody-else lineup, fell to 6.8% share from 10.9%.

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