The march to streaming continues essentially unabated. When it came to overall TV viewing in the month of June, streaming accounted for 33.7%, according to Nielsen’s monthly study, The Gauge. That number represents the largest proportion taken up by streaming since the survey first launched in May 2021.
Cable accounted for 35.1% of viewing in the month while broadcast comprised 22.4%, both of which were the lowest recorded in the survey’s history, although Nielsen noted that viewing for both is traditionally low in the summer months.
In terms of individual streaming services, Netflix took up the most streaming time — with 7.7%. YouTube was second with 6.9% and Hulu came in third with 3.3% — with viewership from the companies’ live TV streaming services YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV included in those totals. Prime Video was fourth in the monthly rankings at 2.9%, followed by Disney+ in fifth (2%), and HBO Max (1%). The catchall “other” category — which includes services receiving less than 1% of viewing time — made up 9.9% of June’s viewing, more than any individual service.
In terms of viewing time year over year, Prime Video jumped 31.9% since last June, while Disney+ rose 22% and Netflix by 18%.
Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and YouTube all posted record viewing shares, with Netflix, in particular, gaining 16% more viewership than the month before, presumably thanks to many viewers binging the first volume of “Stranger Things” Season 4 episodes that debuted in late May. In Nielsen's ratings for the week of June 13-19, “Stranger Things” was the top original streaming show by far, recording nearly 3 billion minutes viewed, well ahead of second-place “Peaky Blinders,” which also streams domestically on Netflix. In all, the world’s largest streamer took up eight of the top 10 spots that week, which was before the final two episodes of the “Stranger Things” season arrived on July 1.
It’s another piece of good news for Netflix after the streamer had suffered through three months of bad press. Despite losing 970,000 subscribers worldwide in the second quarter, the total was far fewer than the 2 million that Netflix had projected it would lose back in April. Netflix actually posted a year-over-year subscriber increase of 11.67 million, to bring its current global subscriber total to 209 million.
Also, the company forecast that it will gain 1 million subscribers in the third quarter. If that happens, the much-ballyhooed Netflix decline of early 2022 will look more like a dip than a sustained decline.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.