Streaming’s portion of TV watch-time edged closer to the 50% threshold in July, a month that saw broadcast television networks go light on live sports and original programming as they typically do.
That’s the big takeaway from the latest monthly report from Nielsen dubbed “The Gauge,” which offers a snapshot of total TV and streaming consumption.
“Driven by an influx of streaming options across platforms, streaming usage trended upward slightly as audiences spent a record 47.3% of overall TV viewing time in July watching its content,” Nielsen notes.
Netflix in July experienced a 5% month-to-month viewing increase to achieve a platform record of 8.8% of TV. New releases of both original and acquired titles demonstrated that broadcast TV may need to reimagine how it handles the traditional summer programming slate.
For NBCUniversal, balancing Peacock performance with that of NBC may become a greater challenge. The OTT platform owned by Comcast saw another big month for its “Love Island USA” franchise, as it was July’s second most-streamed title with 5.3 billion viewing minutes. Overall, Peacock was up 3% versus June and added 0.1 share points to tie its non-Olympic monthly record of 1.6% of TV.
The rest of July’s top titles are all (except “Bluey,” at No. 6) shows one can view on Netflix, although No. 10 “Grey’s Anatomy” can also be found on Hulu.
In addition to Netflix, The Roku Channel (2.8%) and YouTube (13.4%) also set platform records in July. The Roku Channel exhibited the largest monthly usage increase across all platforms with a 7.5% lift vs. June, while YouTube viewing climbed 2% with 18-24 year-old viewers notching the largest increase among age demographics (+8%).
Broadcast’s 18.4% share of TV was helped slightly by a 28% increase in news viewing, which was illustrated by “ABC World News Tonight” collecting 19 of this month’s top 20 broadcast telecasts. The MLB All-Star Game on FOX took the remaining slot at 13th.
Cable finished with 22.2% of TV watch-time in July. Although it exhibited monthly declines in news (-11%) and sports (-17%) viewing, with the latter feeling the absence of the NBA Playoffs, the MLB Home Run Derby on ESPN was the bright spot, topping cable telecasts for July with 5.3 million viewers.
The July 2025 interval is June 30-July 27.
