YouTube Leads TV Viewing for 4th Consecutive Month With 12.5% Share in May

YouTube maintained its lead in Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge for the fourth consecutive month in May, hitting a TV viewership share of 12.5% and extending its gains over Netflix and its legacy media competitors.

The Alphabet-owned video platform led the streaming category to a historic 44.8% viewership share, surpassing cable and broadcast for the first time ever. Though it actually exhibited monthly declines in virtually every demographic group, with the exception of audiences 65 and older, its overall decrease was ultimately less than that of total TV, leading to a monthly gain in share and yet another platform best.

Trailing behind the Alphabet-owned video platform were Disney in second place with a share of 10.7%, NBCUniversal moving to third with 8%, Paramount falling to fourth with 7.9% after the conclusions of the NCAA basketball tournament and The Masters  and Netflix landing in fifth place with 7.5%.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox posted the largest gains of any distributor for the month, ending with shares of 7% each.

WBD’s gains were driven by TNT, which saw a 69% jump in viewership over the previous month due in large part to its NBA Playoffs coverage. The eight New York Knicks games carried by TNT amassed nearly 7 billion viewing minutes combined. Across Disney and WBD entities, the NBA playoffs generated 31.4 billion viewing minutes for the month, with nearly a quarter of the viewing total attributable to Knicks games.

Fox’s increase was driven by NASCAR on Fox Sports and Tubi’s continued growth. The free ad-supported streamer posted a record 2.2% share of TV vieiwing in May, driven by a 25% increase among 18-24 year-olds and accounting for nearly a third of FOX’s overall viewing total. Tubi reaches a total of more than 100 million monthly active users.

Rounding out the remainder of the list was Amazon with a share of 3.6%; The Roku Channel with a record 2.5% share, boosted by double-digit gains among the 12-17 and 25-34 age demographics; Scripps with 2.1%, Weigel Broadcasting with 1.3%, A+E Networks and Hallmark with 1% each and AMC Networks with 0.8%.

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