It’s Official: Streaming Is King (and One Provider Rules Over All Others)

The latest Nielsen Gauge report unveils several striking developments regarding consumer TV viewing patterns.

June 27, 2025

Press Release CE Pro

Nielsen published its monthly report of The Gauge—which looks at the broadcast TV/Cable/Streaming landscape—for May, and, for the first time, streaming has beat the combined viewership of broadcast and cable television.

According to the report, viewable here, streaming accounted for 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025. Broadcast and cable only garnered 20.1% and 24.1%, respectively. Combined, that’s 44.2% of all TV viewership.

Why That’s Significant

Since Nielsen began tracking viewership rates back in 2021, streaming has risen 71% in terms of usage among Americans. However, that meteoric rise has begun to taper off in recent years as broadcast and cable television have begun to show surprising resilience.

Compared with roughly the same time last year (July), streaming’s usage has only risen 4.5% from 40.3%. Cable dropped 3.1% and broadcast a mere 0.4%. Since The Gauge’s inception cable and broadcast television viewership is down 39% and 21% respectively.

What Might Be Causing a Streaming Slowdown

Streaming has come under pressure in recent years both inside and outside of its content ecosystem.

As far as exterior pressures are concerned, the image that streaming is the cheaper and more convenient alternative to cable that won its audience in the first place has come under scrutiny (especially those looking to stream live sports).

Many Americans, according to reports done by the likes of Coupon Cabin, say they’ve cancelled at least one streaming subscription due to the increasing costs. Other reports, like those conducted by Parks Associates, also confirm a growing dissatisfaction with streaming services.

How It’s Impacting Service Providers

This isn’t to say Americans are cutting themselves off from streaming services entirely. In fact, that cost angle feeds into the growing power struggle among streaming services, and may just be why streaming remains so popular at first glance, according to Nielsen.

Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) services the likes of PlutoTV, Roku Channel and Tubi have been steadily gaining subscribers to the point where they’re finally showing up on the charts. Combined these FAST channels represented 5.7% of total TV viewing in May, more than any individual broadcast network.

One Streaming Provider is Still Crushing All Others, Though

Behind all of this, however, is a titan whose viewership rise matches streaming itself in terms of explosive growth. YouTube Main (which excludes YouTube TV) viewership has grown 120% since 2021 and represented 12.5% of all TV viewing in May.

For context, Netflix, the largest Streaming Video on Demand (SVOD) provider, only represented 7.5% of all TV viewing. Behind that, the next two biggest SVOD providers, Disney+ and Prime Video, represented 5% and 3.5% respectively.

And Its Parent Company Has Taken Notice

Google announced that it would be cutting the budget for its Google TV and Android TV division by 10%. Earlier this year, the company hinted that it would be switching to a biennial cycle for updating its OS compared to the previous annual rotation.

However, in this latest piece of news, which came to light via The Information, also mentioned that Google is in turn ramping up its investment in YouTube. That same report also states that Google is now planning on centering its TV business around YouTube because of how popular it has become in the realm of streaming.

In Conclusion

Streaming keeps pulling viewership away from cable and broadcasting, however, viewer gripes over complexity and cost are pushing more into the arms of free services that, in the case of YouTube, have a drastically different approach to content than the current meta.

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