Broadcast TV viewing jumps 20% in September thanks to football
Broadcast TV viewing jumps 20% in September thanks to football
Lest anyone doubt that gridiron football is the biggest draw in American television, Nielsen’s The Gauge report for September shows its impact.
The NFL and college football took TVs by storm in September, according to Nielsen. That company has released its monthly The Gauge report — which measures how much TV viewers are watching by source — for September, and the data shows that broadcast TV saw a huge increase in viewership during the month thanks to the return of the NFL and top college conferences to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.
Key Details:
- Historic rise: Broadcast TV viewership rose 20% over August’s numbers.
- Passing cable: Broadcast accounted for more TV viewing than cable for the first time ever in The Gauge.
- NFL strong: Fifteen NFL telecasts in September drew more viewing better than August’s best-performing TV program.
Per Nielsen’s The Gauge report for September, time spent watching broadcast TV in the month exploded by 20% month-over-month. It gained 3.2 share points overall, the largest monthly increases in volume and share for any category in the history of The Gauge.
Broadcast TV accounted for 22.3% of all TV watched in September. That number puts it ahead of the cable category (before the figures are rounded off) for the first time since The Gauge began tracking TV viewership in 2021. Streaming was still the most-watched method of TV during the month, with 45.2% of all viewing put toward that medium.
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Sports viewership represented 33% of broadcast TV watching in September, three times the amount that it accounted for in August. In total, 15 NFL telecasts on CBS, Fox, and NBC outpaced the most-watched program of August, and the most-watched of these games doubled viewership compared to the August telecast.
Cable sports viewing also increased by 11% in September, thanks to the return of “Monday Night Football.” Younger audiences flocked back to broadcast with the start of football season; the largest monthly increases in broadcast and cable viewing came from 25-34 year-olds.
Prime Video benefited from the return of football as well, thanks to its streams of “Thursday Night Football” each week. Its most-watched Thursday night NFL game ever aired on Sept. 11, when the Washington Commanders and Green Bay Packers game generated over 3 billion viewing minutes.
Streaming services are seeing a temporary pullback as football demands the attention of audiences, and it could give Netflix reason to reconsider its position that it probably won't go after a large package of NFL games in the league’s next round of negotiations. If Netflix wants to be the top viewing platform all year round, a good-sized bundle of NFL games would be a great way to make it happen.
As the number of NFL games on streaming services like Fox One and the ESPN direct-to-consumer platform increases in the future, broadcast TV might not see this kind of bump at the start of football seasons going forward. But for now, football season means broadcast TV gets to rule the roost for a while.
Prime Video
Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.