Broadcast TV bounced back in September as the NFL and college football drove a 20% month-over-month spike in viewership — compared to around 3% across all of TV — marking the largest monthly increase in volume and share for any category in Nielsen’s monthly Gauge reports since tracking began in May 2021.
The category finished the month with 22.3% of overall television viewing, putting it ahead of cable on an unrounded basis for the first time ever. Sports viewership tripled to represent 33% of broadcast’s total in September, versus 11% in August. 15 telecasts — which were all NFL games across CBS, FOX and NBC— outpaced last month’s most-watched telecast, with September’s biggest audience more than doubling it.
Cable also finished the month with a 22.3% share, driven by a 9% increase in news viewership, which represent over a quarter of the category’s viewing total, and 11% increase in sports viewership. The top five cable telecasts this month included four Monday Night Football games on ESPN, plus the first international NFL game of the season on NFL Network.
Viewing gains for broadcast and cable were driven primarily by younger audiences, with the largest monthly increases coming from 25-34 year-olds. Broadcast viewing among that group climbed 65%, and cable viewing was up 16%.
Despite those gains, streaming continued to dominate TV usage, making up 45.2% of total watch time in September. However, the category saw fewer billion-minute titles in Nielsen’s weekly Streaming Top 10, where a streaming-heavy July saw 18 titles exceed one billion weekly viewing minutes, compared to 10 titles in September.
Leading the pack once against was YouTube with a 12.6% share. The 2% month-over-month decline was due to the impact of six to 17-year-olds heading back to school. Netflix also felt the impact, with its share falling to 8.3%. However, “Wednesday” dominated streaming titles with over 7 billion viewing minutes across the month — nearly double its film “KPOP Demon Hunters,” which drew 3.6 billion minutes and took the second place spot.
Disney finished in third with an aggregate share of 4.5% across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, while Prime Video held steady in fourth at 3.9%. The latter notched its most-watched NFL Thursday Night Football game ever on the platform on Sept. 11, as the Commanders-Packers matchup generated over 3 billion minutes viewed.
The remainder of the list included The Roku Channel at 2.8%, Tubi at 2.1%, Paramount at 2% across Paramount+ and Pluto TV, Peacock at 1.4% and Warner Bros. Discovery at 1.3%.
