For the fourth straight month, Streaming has recorded an all-time total TV viewership high. Following on from the 44.3% reported for April, Nielsen‘s latest The Gauge report confirmed a 44.8% Streaming category share in May 2025.
In contrast to Streaming, Broadcast recorded a total TV viewership share of 20.1%, down from its 20.8% in April and 20.5% in March. Likewise, Cable’s share totaled 24.1%, down from 24.5% in April.
With a 44.8% share, this also means May 2025 was the first time that the Streaming category recorded a higher share than Broadcast and Cable combined (44.2%).
YouTube Continues To Help Streaming’s Growth
At the individual streaming service level, YouTube saw its share increase to 12.5%, up from 12.4% in April and 12% in March, marking yet another all-time high for YouTube.
According to Nielsen, YouTube represented 12.5% of all television viewing in May 2025.
Outside of YouTube, and in spite of being another good month for Streaming in general, the rest of the most-popular services didn’t have a great month.
For example, Netflix at 7.5%, Disney (Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu) at 5%, Prime Video at 3.5%, Warner/Discovery (Max and Discovery+) at 1.5%, and Peacock at 1.4%, all saw no change compared to the month before.
May was even worse for Paramount Streaming (Paramount+ and Pluto TV), which saw its share decrease to 2.2%, down from 2.4% in April and 2.3% in March.
Free services Continue To Make Their Mark
While the paid free streaming services had somewhat of a stale month in terms of share growth, the same cannot be said for the free streaming service sector.
The Roku Channel saw its share increase to 2.5% in May, up from 2.2% in March and 2.4% in April. Likewise, Tubi saw its share increase to 2.2%, up from 1.9% in March and 2% in April.
In total, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel and Tubi combined for 5.7% of total TV viewing in May 2025, according to Nielsen.
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