Broadcast Usage Dips Post-NFL In February, Streaming Stays Strong

The conclusion of the NFL season led to an anticipated decline in TV utilization, particularly in broadcast, for the month of February. Despite the everyday seasonal dip in viewing, New Amsterdam and The Last Of Us helped streaming keep sturdy.

According to Nielsen’s month-to-month report The Gauge, common TV viewership was down 5.1% total, led by a 9.2% lower in broadcast viewing. Sports broadcast viewing bore the brunt of that, taking a 65% hit month-over-month.

Cable was down 5.7%, whereas streaming weathered the storm with solely a 1% decline. The total decline from January to February is pretty typical, and it stayed consistent with final yr’s 5.7% decline noticed over the identical time interval.

While streaming utilization was down total, it really elevated its share of complete TV utilization, making up 34.3% of all viewing for the month. That’s a record-high for the digital format, which Nielsen says was pushed by the recognition of exhibits together with New Amsterdam and The Last Of Us.

New Amsterdam was probably the most seen streaming program for the month, bringing in 4.6B viewing minutes throughout Netflix and Peacock. Seasons 3 and 4 started streaming on Netflix initially of February, so it is smart that viewers could be catching up on what they missed.

HBO‘s The Last Of Us was the second most viewed program for the month with 4.4B minutes of viewing on HBO Max. This is fairly impressive, considering it doesn’t account for any viewing on HBO’s linear channel. According to HBO, the primary six episodes are averaging greater than 30M viewers.

Meanwhile, whereas Netflix nonetheless dominates the opposite streaming companies by way of its complete share of streaming utilization, viewing on the platform was really down by 6.7% in February. That’s regardless of the debut of the primary 5 episodes of You Season 4, which drove the sequence to carried out pretty sturdy throughout the month with 4.2B viewing minutes.

See extra within the graphic beneath.