Total TV viewing climbed 5% month-over-month in January, boosted by NFL and NCAA football, scripted dramas and news programming, according to Nielsen’s latest Gauge report.
The NFL’s AFC Championship game on Jan. 26 on CBS drew the largest audience for the month of 57.4 million viewers, followed by Fox’s NFC Championship game the same day, which brought in 44.2 million viewers.
Coverage of the college football playoffs on ESPN, as well as other various bowl games, drove a 42% bump in cable sports viewing in January. The seven CFP games in January accounted for the top seven cable telecasts for the month, led by the 22.1 million viewers that watched the National Championship Game on January 20.
Other sports that aired during the month included Prime Video’s exclusive stream of the NFL wild card playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens on January 11, which in turn helped drive the second-highest day of streaming on record with over 47 billion total minutes, just behind Christmas Day 2024’s 51.2 billion minutes.
In addition to sports, ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin Eve,” The Golden Globes on CBS, a 15% increase in drama series viewership and 18% increase in news viewership helped lift broadcast by 5.1% month-over-month to a total share of 22.5%.
“New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” brought in 17.9 million viewers, followed by the post-AFC Championship premiere of “Watson” on CBS with 10.8 million, and the Golden Globes with 9.7 million.
Meanwhile, cable viewing jumped 7% for the month to a total share of 24.4%. In addition to the 42% bump from sports viewership, cable also benefited from a 26% increase in news viewing, led by Fox News Channel’s Inauguration Day coverage.
But streaming still accounted for the largest share of television viewing with 42.6%, up 3% month over month and usage up 21% year over year. YouTube remained the streaming leader with a share of 10.8%, followed by Netflix with a 7% jump to a new platform record of 8.6%, primarily driven by “Squid Game,” which generated 9 billion viewing minutes as January’s top streaming title.
Disney, whose Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ streaming services are now aggregated together into a single total, ranked third with a total viewing share of 4.7%, with “Bluey” accumulating 4.7 billion viewing minutes on Disney+ as the month’s second-most streamed program.
The remainder of the list included Prime Video with a 3.7% share, Roku with a platform-best 2.1% share after a 9% increase in January, Tubi with a 1.7% share, Peacock and Paramount+ with shares of 1.4% each, Max with a 1.3% share and Pluto TV with a 0.9% share. Paramount+ original “Landman” rounded out the top three streaming titles in January with 4.4 billion viewing minutes.
