A brand new report from market measurement agency Nielsen says that for the primary time, TV viewers watched extra on streaming companies like Netflix and Disney+ than they did on cable TV, making streaming the most well-liked method to devour content material.
The shift has been predicted by analysts and commentators for years, however it has solely now come to fruition. Streaming had beforehand outpaced over-the-air broadcast TV, however cable was nonetheless beating it till July.
In July, streaming accounted for 34.8 p.c of audiences’ TV viewing. The runner-up was the now-dethroned cable TV, which got here up narrowly behind at 34.4 p.c. The comparatively distant third was broadcast at 21.6 p.c.
Streaming was up 22.6 p.c in comparison with July of 2021, and audiences streamed a mean of 190.9 billion minutes per week. Nielsen factors out that that is considerably greater than a beforehand publicized streaming quantity: 169.9 billion minutes in April of 2020, some of the locked-down months of the pandemic.
All that mentioned, the shift might be attributed as a lot to a scarcity of latest content material—particularly sports activities programming—on cable in July as to the expansion of streaming. Streaming companies have been pumping out new content material as quick as ever, whereas cable channels have slowed down for the summer season. There may be additionally far more streaming content material than there was once, because of new service launches like Peacock and Paramount+ over the previous few years.
Nielsen notes that total TV viewership hasn’t modified a lot—simply the relative measurement of every slice of the pie. In different phrases, individuals aren’t watching extra TV; they’re watching the identical quantity of TV however in numerous methods.
The report additionally outlined the relative efficiency of various standard streaming platforms. The most important class was the catch-all “different streaming” at 10.2 p.c of the streaming pie, however Netflix was the highest single service at 8 p.c. It was adopted by YouTube at 7.3 p.c, Hulu at 3.6 p.c, Amazon Prime Video at 3 p.c, Disney+ at 1.8 p.c, and HBO Max at one p.c.
Lastly, it is price mentioning that Nielsen is monitoring knowledge from viewing on precise TVs. This knowledge doesn’t embrace cellular or desktop viewing, which might possible increase streaming even additional.