Nielsen: December U.S. TV Usage Climbs

Television viewing levels in December in the U.S. surpassed November levels by nearly 2 percent, making the month 2023’s second-highest for TV viewing behind January, according to the latest report of Nielsen’s The Gauge.

Five days recorded over 100 billion TV viewing minutes, including the second-highest daily total in 2023, occurring on December 31 (behind Super Bowl Sunday on February 12) with over 105 billion minutes.

While all but the broadcast category showed monthly increases in usage, the “other” category was the only to gain in share in December (up 1.8 points), partly driven by increased video game console usage among younger demographics. (The “other” category captures all other TV usage that does not fall into the broadcast, cable or streaming categories, and primarily includes tuning from unmeasured sources, unmeasured video-on-demand, audio streaming, gaming and other device usage, e.g. DVD playback.)

After four consecutive months of growth, broadcast viewing decreased 4.3 percent from November, which brought the category to a 23.5 percent share of TV usage (down 1.5 points). Sports remained the most-watched broadcast genre, accounting for 28.5 percent of broadcast viewing.

Cable viewing increased another 1.3 percent this month, but due to the larger increase in overall TV usage, cable gave up 0.1 share points to finish at 28.2 percent of total TV usage.

Streaming usage increased 1.2 percent in December, but like cable, it was not enough to maintain its share, and the category fell to 35.9 percent of overall TV usage (down 0.2 points).

Netflix viewership climbed nearly 6 percent to account for 7.7 percent of TV usage (up 0.3 points). Tubi saw a 6.6 percent gain in viewing to maintain 1.4 percent of TV usage. YouTube’s share of TV fell to 8.5 percent (down 0.4 points) following a 3.4 percent drop in usage, but it maintained the top spot among streaming platforms.

Linear (live TV) streaming via MVPD (multichannel video programming distributors) and vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributors) apps represented 6 percent of total television usage in December.