YouTube’s streak as TV’s top media distributor continued in July, with the company capturing 13.4% of TV viewing. The company established its largest lead to date over its streaming and legacy media competitors since Nielsen began first tracking in November 2023.
Disney stayed in second place at 9.4%, while Netflix jumped to 8.8% in July –rounding out the top three for the second consecutive month.
The latter saw the largest volume gain across all streaming platforms during the month, increasing its average minute audience by an additional 215,000 viewers compared to June. It was also the only streaming platform to exhibit an increase across all viewing demographic categories month over month.
NBCUniversal and Paramount landed in the fourth and fifth place spots with 7.6% and 7% of TV viewing for the month, respectively.
The remainder of the list included Fox at 6.5%, Warner Bros. Discovery at 6%, Amazon at 3.9%, The Roku Channel at 2.8%, Scripps at 2.2%, Weigel Broadcasting at 1.4%, Hallmark at 1.1% A+E Networks at 1% and AMC Networks at 0.8%.
The Roku Channel saw the largest monthly increase of all streaming platforms with a 7.5% boost compared to June.
Amazon’s gains were driven by its “Bosch” spinoff “Ballard,” which attracted viewers over 50 and generated 2.5 billion minutes viewed, and new episodes of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” which resonated with the 12-to-24 demo and totaled 1.5 billion minutes. The tech giant has seen its share of TV viewing increase 62% since July 2021.
Hallmark’s growth was fueled by its annual “Christmas in July” programming on The Hallmark Channel, where new premieres, including the four-part “Unwrapping Christmas” movies and holiday series “Holidazed” and “Christmas at Sea,” resulted in a 19% viewership bump for the network.
The latest update comes as streaming reached nearly half of total TV viewing for the month at 47.3%. In comparison, Broadcast made up 18% of TV viewing in July, boosted by a 28% increase in news viewing, while cable finished with 22.2% of TV viewing in July following a 11% dip in news and 17% drop in sports viewing.
