Streaming saw its total TV share drop to 42.6% in January 2025. In spite of the overall decline, the latest The Gauge data from Nielsen indicated streaming viewership in January was 3% higher than in December, and Streaming continues to hold the greatest share overall.
While Streaming dropped to 42.6%, Cable’s total TV share in January increased to 24.4%, up from and 23.8% in December but down on November’s 25%. Likewise, Broadcast’s share increased to 22.5%, up from 22.4% in December but down from November’s 23.7%.
In explaining the January increase for Cable and Broadcast, Nielsen pointed to football as playing a major role, with NFL and NCAA games proving popular and drawing in “big audiences.” For example, the NFL AFC Championship game on CBS drew the largest audience with 57.4 million viewers, and the NFC Championship game on Fox pulled in 44.2 million viewers.
Similar to Streaming in general, YouTube also saw its individual share decline. After closing December with 11.1%, Nielsen notes YouTube accounted for 10.8% in January. Unlike YouTube, Netflix continued to grow, increasing from 8.5% in December to 8.6% in January.
Disney+ saw a massive jump in January, increasing from 2.1% to 4.7%. However, this was more of a data collection adjustment than a sudden increase in viewership. The Gauge now combines viewership for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ together under Disney+.
Elsewhere, Prime Video decreased from 4% to 3.7%, Peacock decreased from 1.6% to 1.4%, Paramount+ remained steady at 1.4%, and Max increased from 1.2% to 1.3%.
In terms of free services, The Roku Channel continued growing, with its share increasing from 2% in December to 2.1% in January, resulting in another month as the best performing free streaming service. In contrast, Tubi saw no change with 1.7% and Pluto TV remained at 0.9% in January 2025.
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