Third consecutive record month for US streaming

The Gauge – May 2022 – Nielsen

Streaming in the US recorded its third consecutive record high as a proportion of overall TV viewing time.

According to Nielsen’s monthly The Gauge TV viewing snapshot, streaming viewership accounted for 31.9% of total television consumption in the US in May. This comes after previous record months in April and March when streaming captured 30.4% and 29.7% of total TV viewing respectively.

Of that streaming total, Netflix was the narrow individual winner as it recorded 6.8% of all TV viewing in the country. The streaming leader however was only narrowly behind YouTube, which was at 6.7%. Hulu, Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max recorded 3.4%, 2.6%, 1.7% and 1.0% respectively, while other streaming providers made up the remaining 9.6%.

Streaming is narrowing the gap to cable in the US, with the latter accounting for 36.5% of all TV usage. Broadcast TV meanwhile accounted for 24.4% of all TV time, and the ‘other’ category makes up the remaining 7.2%.

In terms of TV viewing genre, cable news was down 4.2% from April to 17%, but still remained as the largest portion of cable’s share. Cable sports viewing accounted for 9% and was up by 7%, thanks to the NBA playoff games.