Streaming Reaches Historic Milestone, Eclipses Combined Broadcast and Cable Viewing For First Time

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The May 2025 interval included dates 04/28/2025 through 05/25/2025. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar with measurement weeks that run Monday through Sunday.

This month also marks four years since the launch of The Gauge, which debuted with the May 2021 report. As audience viewing habits—and the media landscape at large—have rapidly evolved over that time, The Gauge has continued to serve as the industry benchmark for tracking how people spend time watching television. When comparing TV usage in May 2021 and May 2025, it’s clear that streaming has been the dominant viewing format with a usage increase of 71%. And while broadcast and cable viewing have declined (down 21% and 39%, respectively, compared with May 2021), traditional TV has shown surprising resilience.

“It’s fitting that this inflection point coincides with the four year anniversary of Nielsen’s The Gauge, which has become the gold standard for streaming TV measurement,” said Karthik Rao, Nielsen CEO. “It’s also a credit to media companies, who have deftly adapted their programming strategies to meet their viewers where they are watching TV – whether it’s on streaming or linear platforms.”

Along with the 71% increase in streaming usage, six additional streaming services are now reported in the list of platforms that exceed a full share point of TV usage. The original list included Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Prime Video and Disney+, and has expanded to 11 platforms in May 2025.

Among subscription services, Netflix has gone wire-to-wire as the leading SVOD provider in total TV usage for four straight years. Netflix’s viewership has climbed 27% since May 2021, and the streamer owned the biggest day in streaming history, thanks to two exclusive NFL games it live streamed on Christmas Day 2024. Many programs—and by extension, other distributors—have also benefited from the SVOD giant through The Netflix Effect, where licensed content becomes an even bigger hit when distributed on the platform. Exemplified by memorable streaming hits like Suits (Netflix / Peacock) and Young Sheldon (Netflix / Max), this month’s top streaming title, You, (4 billion minutes) was one of the first examples of the Netflix Effect in 2018.

Free services have been a major driver of streaming’s overall success. Most notably, YouTube Main (excluding YouTube TV) has exhibited steady, significant growth and is up over 120% since 2021. YouTube represented 12.5% of all television viewing in May, its fourth consecutive monthly share increase and the highest share of TV for any streamer to date. Additionally, FAST services have become increasingly popular, and three have reached the reportable threshold in The Gauge. PlutoTV, Roku Channel and Tubi combined for 5.7% of total TV viewing in May, which is larger than any individual broadcast network this interval.

The continued transformation of traditional media companies into streaming-first entities has also been a strong contributor to the growth of streaming. Platforms like Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock have expanded their accessibility to create crucial points of connection with streaming-native audiences, complementing rather than competing with their linear counterparts. This trend extends beyond original and catalog content, too, demonstrated by successful simulcasts of sporting events like Super Bowl LIX on FOX and Tubi, and the 2024 Olympics on NBC and Peacock. Virtually all subscription-based platforms now have ad-supported components as well, which are creating a critical new element to the television landscape from an agency and advertiser perspective as they seek to reach streaming-centric consumers.

While the milestone of streaming exceeding traditional TV viewership is almost certainly not permanent, it presumably will be in the near future. This trend could continue into the summer months, but the balance will likely shift back—at least temporarily—as football kicks off and a new broadcast season returns.

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