It’s official: You’re watching television when you want to, not when you’re told to. For the third consecutive month, Nielsen says Americans are streaming more than tuning in for old-fashioned broadcast or cable TV. Even the return of football and the fall TV season couldn’t drag down streaming, which commanded nearly 37% of all television viewing in September.
Most notably, Americans spent more time watching YouTube than any other streaming service, even Netflix. YouTube was once primarily thought of as a mobile app popular with young, cellphone-wielding users, but more and more people are watching its content—including music videos, tutorials, and vlogs—on TV screens. The company says 135 million people logged into its app from TVs last year.
Netflix had long been the most-popular streaming service in the US, according to Nielsen, though YouTube has been close behind for some time. It remained the subscription streaming app of choice for Americans in September, the month it released Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which has become the second-most popular English-language TV show in its history. (The fourth season of Stranger Things still wears the crown.) Netflix—which has 73.4 million subscribers in the US and Canada—had a significant head start in the streaming wars, launching its service well before Amazon, Apple, Disney and others flooded the market. Even with its recent challenges—it lost subscribers during the first half of the year, though it’s started to gain them back—its shows consistently top Nielsen’s ranking of streaming programs. So while it’s not surprising that it remains the most-watched subscription streamer in the U.S., it’s notable that it commands a larger percentage of total viewership than Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max combined.
Streaming services got an unexpected boost when people found themselves homebound during the pandemic. Combined, broadcast and cable still represent more than half of Americans’ total TV consumption. And broadcast showed signs of life earlier this year with the launch of ABC comedy breakout Abbott Elementary, which returned for a second season in September after collecting three Emmys. But Nielsen’s data shows that streaming—which first overtook cable in July after beating out broadcast for the first time in 2021—has grown its share of viewing every month since.
Natalie Jarvey
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