Sports and streaming content fuel a rise in total TV usage in January in the US

New, in-demand content will always draw a crowd, and when high-demand content spans multiple channels, total usage increases. That is what happened in the United States in January, as a surge of viewership for broadcast dramas, sports and new streaming content pushed total usage of TV up 1.3% compared with December, according to Nielsen’s latest report.

Across TV options, broadcast benefitted the most from the usage increase, as dramas and sports drove a 2.1% increase in broadcast usage. Across the category, viewing to dramas rose 29% from December to account for 23.5% of the total, and sports jumped a whopping 55% to pull in 25.3%, with the NFL playoffs capturing the ten most-viewed programs during the month. On a year-over-year basis, however, broadcast viewership was down 6.0%.

Streaming usage increased 1.2% from December 2022, with Prime Video gaining 9.3% in usage. The arrival of a new season of “Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan” and the movie “Shotgun Wedding” helped Prime Video gain 0.2 share points to end the month with 2.9% of total television. Meanwhile, Hulu (including Hulu Live) was up 2.9% in usage and added 0.1 share points. While Netflix’s share of TV held steady at 7.5%, the end of the holiday season had an impact on Disney+, which declined 9.9% and lost 0.2 share points.

At the same time, cable usage was flat compared with December, as a 22% increase in sports usage could not make up the gap left by the 19% decline in cable movie viewing – an additional viewing trend associated with the closing of the 2022 holiday season.