Television up 8% in January as streaming surges and broadcast booms – Nielsen
With 197.6 Billion viewings, the January 1st week broke all previous streaming records. Christmas Week 2021 is now second with 183 Billion viewings. The 12% increase in monthly volume, which was unprecedented in any other category, resulted in an additional 1.1% rise in streaming share that set another record of 28.9% television usage. For the month of January, streaming averaged 180 billion minutes per week – the highest average weekly figure of any month since SME introduced streaming measurement.
Broadcast consumption was up 9% versus December, a trend driven by arguably the most compelling NFL playoffs ever – and increased engagement with refreshed broadcast dramas, up 22% compared to the previous month. Although cable usage was up 3%, it lost 1.7 shares points to reach 35.6%. This is mainly due to holiday movie seasons.
Let me take you to the details of our methodology.
You can see Brian Fuhrer (SVP Product Strategy, SME) giving a behind-the-scenes view of some of The Gauge’s viewing adjustments.
METHODOLOGY AND FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The Gauge is a monthly analysis of consumers’ access to content on key TV delivery channels, such as Broadcast, Streaming and Cable. The chart also shows the breakdown of major streaming distributors. It shows both the percentage of total TV use by each streaming distributor and by category.
The Gauge’s data are derived from two weighted panels. They then combine to make the graphic. SME’s streaming data is derived from a subset of Streaming Meter-enabled TV households within the National TV panel. The linear TV sources (Broadcast and Cable), as well as total usage are based on viewing from SME’s overall TV panel.
The data are based upon a particular viewing period. The data, representing a 5 week month, includes a combination of Live + 7 for weeks 1 – 4 in the data time period. Notice: Live + 7 covers live viewing of television and watching up to seven days after. The Live + 3 package includes live television viewing and viewing for up to three additional days.
Within The Gauge, “Other” includes all other TVs. All other TVs, including unmeasured source tuning, streaming via a cable set-top box, gaming and any other device (DVD player) are included in this category. Because streaming via cable set top boxes does not credit respective streaming distributors, these are included in the “Other” category. SME will continue to work towards crediting individual streaming distributors via cable set-top boxes as we improve our Streaming Meter technology.
Streaming platforms listed as “Other Streaming” includes any high-bandwidth video streaming on television that is not individually broken out.
Hulu Live is available for viewing, as well as Youtube TV viewing.
The encoded live TV (or encoded linear streaming) is available under both Broadcast and Cable groups. Hulu, Youtube TV and other streaming MVPD / vMVPD apps are all included in the Broadcast and Cable groups (linear TV), as well as under Streaming. MVPD is a multichannel video programming distributor. This service provides several television channels. Distributors that combine linear TV content from the major networks into a single subscription package and make it accessible to all devices connected via broadband internet are called vMVPDs.
