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TV viewership scored big in September as the return of football drove double-digit spikes for Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal and Paramount, primarily driven by NFL and college football coverage carried by broadcast affiliates. Fox saw the largest growth with a 20% jump in viewing, or a 1.2 share point gain to finish with a total of 7.9% of watch time. Disney added 1 share point as overall viewership climbed 13% over August, with the No. 2 distributor finishing the month with 10.7% of TV. ESPN accounted for half of Disney’s share, whose viewership climbed 65% during the month. NBCUniversal also added 1 share point, driven by a 16% viewership uptick, concluding the month with 8.6% of TV, while Paramount saw an 11% bump in viewership and 0.6 additional share points, finishing the month at 7.7% of TV. When looking at viewership for the broadcast affiliates, Fox saw the largest viewership bump of 59% from its stations, followed by 37% for NBC affiliates, 29% for CBS affiliates and 24% for ABC affiliates. “These massive football audiences also provide broadcasters the opportunity to promote new, non-sports content slates,” Nielsen said in a statement. “Disney, Paramount and NBCU appear to be leaning into this strategy, as ABC’s ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ CBS’ ‘Survivor’ and NBC’s ‘The Voice’ have all started strong, setting the stage for more premieres in the months ahead.” As a result, Fox advanced from sixth to fifth place in the overall ranking, while NBCUniversal reclaimed the third place spot from Netflix, who finished the month with 8.3% of TV. However, it wasn’t enough to topple the streaming leader for TV time: YouTube. The Alphabet-owned platform captured 12.6% of total TV watch time, though its gap with Disney narrowed to just 1.9 points. Rounding out the remainder of the list was Warner Bros. Discovery at 5.4%, Amazon at 3.9%, The Roku Channel at 2.8%, Scripps at 2.1%, Weigel Broadcasting at 1.4%, A+E Networks and Hallmark at 0.9% each and AMC Networks at 0.7%. Overall, streaming viewership made up 45.2% of total TV time. Meanwhile, broadcast viewership saw a 20% viewership spike driven by football — 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. 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. 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%.
