For the first time, the amount of hours spent streaming content has overtaken traditional television viewing in the US. Subscribers to services like Netflix and Hulu accounted for 34.8 percent of all TV consumption in July, the research firm Nielsen has announced. Cable television accounted for 34.4 percent.
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Broadcast content came in a distant third of 21.6 percent. According to Nielsen, audiences watched an average of 190.9 billion minutes per week of streamed content in July. This even outpaced the time spent in April 2020, when people were spending more time at home than ever before because of the global pandemic.
The new research arrives as leading entertainment companies like Disney reorient their strategies around direct-to-consumer streaming platforms, investing less heavily in linear programming. But the report also comes at an inflection point for the streaming market, which has started to show some signs that the days of seemingly limitless growth are nearing an end.
In May, Netflix reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. HBO Max, among legacy media’s most successful forays into streaming, recently went through a round of layoffs ahead of a planned merger with Discovery’s streaming app. Last week, Disney lowered long-term forecasts for its streaming operation.
Netflix nonetheless made up the biggest share of viewing for a streaming platform, with an 8% slice of the pie, according to Nielsen, thanks in part to the success of the fourth season of ‘Stranger Things.’ The popular science fiction series captured nearly 18 billion viewing minutes.
But other leading digital distributors each notched record-high shares in July. YouTube reached a 7.3 percent share. Hulu, powered in part by the acclaimed shows ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Bear,’ hit 3.6 percent. Prime Video, boosted by the new action series ‘The Terminal List’ and new episodes of ‘The Boys,’ netted 3 percent.
