Google’s YouTube leads in U.S. TV streaming, Nielsen says

A Nielsen report on TV usage n January said in part: Cable viewing was up 2.7% in January, but the rise in total TV usage resulted in a 0.3 share point loss to land at 27.9% of TV. Seasonality played a role here, as viewers transitioned away from holiday-themed movies, which led to a decrease of more than 19% in feature film viewership. Comparatively, news viewing picked up, accounting for 19% of overall cable usage, with the Iowa Town Hall on Fox News Channel (FOX,FOXA) becoming the only non-sports program to land in the top 10 cable broadcasts, excluding sports commentary… Like broadcast, streaming also benefited from the return of new scripted programming, with Fool Me Once on Netflix (NFLX) topping the list of most-watched programs with 6.5B minutes… Bluey, on Disney+ (DIS), and Reacher, on Amazon Prime Video (AMZN), were close behind, with 5.5B and 4.3B minutes, respectively. In total, streaming usage was up 4.1% in January. At the platform level, YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL) marked its 12th consecutive month as the top streaming service. Peacock (CMCSA) saw a 29% spike in usage, driven by NFL playoff coverage, to account for a record 1.6% share of TV. Netflix gained 0.2 share points to end the month at 7.9% of TV, its highest since August 2023, and the 10% increase in Roku Channel (ROKU) )usage bumped its share back to 1.1% of total TV. Additional companies in the space include: Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and FuboTV (FUBU).