Streaming Total TV Share Dropped To 41% In August As Broadcast Benefitted From The Olympics

Streaming closed out August 2024 with a total TV share of 41%. Although down on the record high 41.4% in July, the share was still significantly up on the 38.3% reported for August 2023. In spite of Streaming maintaining its position as the leading category, it would appear that Broadcast was the big winner last month.

After closing out July with a total TV share of 20.3%, which was down on the 20.5% reported for June, Broadcast accounted for 22% in August. This represented an increase of 8% on July, and almost 12% on a year-over-year basis.

In contrast, Cable saw another monthly decline. After dropping down from 27.2% in June to 26.7% in July, Cable’s share declined to 26.3% in August.

In explaining the unusual increase in Broadcast, Nielsen pointed to the 2024 Paris Olympics games as being a major driving force. According to Nielsen, Olympics programming on NBC “drew millions of viewers in both primetime and daytime windows,” with 32 of NBC’s Olympics telecasts airing during the month totaling more than 5 million viewers. Furthermore, 17 of them drew more than 10 million viewers, helping NBC’s Olympics telecasts to account for the top 19 broadcast telecasts of the month.

In terms of individual streaming services, YouTube’s share accounted for 10.6% in August, marking yet another notable increase on the month before, and another new record. Disney+ also has a good month, climbing from 2.1% in July to 2.3% in August, and Peacock saw a very notable jump to 2.1% (up from 1.5%). Similar to last month, Peacock’s second increase in a row, and “new platform-best,” was also powered by coverage of the Paris Olympics.

Elsewhere, things were not so great. Netflix, for example, dropped to 7.9% (down from 8.4%), Prime Video dropped to 3.1% (down from 3.4%), Hulu dropped to 2.4% (down from 2.7%), Max dropped to 1.3% (down from 1.4%) and Paramount+ remained at 1.1%.

August wasn’t the best month for free streaming services either. After hitting 2% for the first time in June, and then increasing to 2.1% in July, Tubi’s total TV share dropped to 1.8% in August. Likewise, The Roku Channel dropped from 1.6% to 1.7%, and Pluto TV remained unchanged at 0.7%.