A new report from Nielsen indicates that the OTT platform made the biggest jump among media groups last month, growing from number six to number four, while YouTube nearly managed to snatch the top spot from Disney.
Netflix exhibited the largest monthly growth in the June 2024 Media Distributor Gauge report, Nielsen’s cross-platform view of total TV consumption aggregated by media company. With usage up 11.8% compared with May, Netflix added almost a full point to its share of total TV usage and moved from the sixth ranking media company in May, to fourth in June, accounting for 8.4% of TV for the month.
As covered in Nielsen’s report of The Gauge, 40.3% of time spent watching TV in June was attributable to streaming. Pure-play streamers like Netflix and YouTube saw the most benefit from a big streaming month. Time spent watching YouTube on television was up 4.2% in June to push the streamer to nearly 10% of total TV usage, securing another month with the second largest share of TV among media distributors.
While eight of the 14 companies ranked in the Media Distributor Gauge exhibited usage increases this month, affiliate streaming platforms helped rebalance the viewing share for multi-platform distributors across the board. With 10.8% of June’s TV viewing time, Disney maintained the top spot among media distributors, driven by a 15% increase in Disney+ usage. Also Tubi, which notched 2.0% of TV in June and a 15% bump in usage, climbed the ranks among its fellow FOX affiliates and was the company’s second best performer behind FOX News Channel, helping FOX climb to 6.6% of TV (+0.2 pt.).
NBCU retained its spot as the third ranking media distributor in June with 8.5% of TV, despite a loss of half a share point. The Olympics will certainly put the spotlight on NBCU throughout July and August as their coverage of the biennial event has historically drawn large audiences to all of its platforms.
The lack of sports and drama content on broadcast networks was, however, beneficial to cable entrants A&E, AMC and Hallmark whose affiliates helped fill the gaps by riding increases in viewing across cable’s feature film and drama genres.
