In a disruption of summer TV trends, a new school year and the return of football boosted broadcast and cable in Nielsen’s Gauge report for August. The categories finished the month with 19.1% and 22.5% shares of TV viewing, marking their first gains since April.
Broadcast notched its largest share of TV viewing since May as viewership climbed 1.1% on a monthly basis. Across the five-week measurement interval, the peak in broadcast viewership occurred during the final week of the month, coinciding with the official return of college football.
Fox’s first “Big Noon Saturday” game of the season, between Ohio State and Texas on August 30, drew the largest telecast audience this month with over 16.6 million viewers, while ABC owned the next three top telecasts with college football games that each drew over 10 million viewers, including Notre Dame vs. Miami, Alabama vs. Florida State, and LSU vs. Clemson.
Meanwhile, cable gained 0.3 share points month-over-month, with its strongest viewing in the final week in the interval, driven by 18-49 year-olds and college football coverage, specifically on ESPN. Cable sports viewing in August was up 30% compared to the prior month, and represented over 9% of all cable viewership.
As for streaming, the category finished August with a share of 46.4%, down over 4% from the previous month. In no surprise, YouTube continued to lead with a share of 13.1%, followed by Netflix with 8.7% and Disney with 4.6%.
Netflix originals “Wednesday,” “KPop Demon Hunters” and “The Hunting Wives” and the acquired series “Sullivan’s Crossing” took the top four slots and combined for over 22 billion viewing minutes across the five weeks of the interval.
Though monthly viewing levels were down for each streaming platform, Prime Video added 0.1 point to finish the month with 3.9%, just shy of its record 4% set in December 2024. The Amazon-owned streamer benefitted from “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Ballard” and an NFL preseason game on Aug. 21.
Rounding out the remainder of the list for August was The Roku Channel with a share of 2.8%, Tubi with a share of 2.2%, Paramount with a share of 2%, and Warner Bros. Discovery and Peacock with shares of 1.4% each.
Total time spent watching TV was down 2% month-over-month in August, but viewing among kids and teens ages six to 17 was down 9% over the same period. Viewing levels between the first (July 28 to Aug. 3, 2025) and last weeks (Aug. 25 to Aug. 31, 2025) of the interval dropped 21%. Streaming usage among school-aged viewers also exhibited similar declines, dropping 8% on a monthly basis in August, and losing 22% from the first week versus the last week of the month.
