As the summer heats up and kids get out of school, viewing for the warmer months is expected to see an uptick in streaming as kids and family programming soars, according to Nielsen SVP of product leadership Brian Fuhrer.
The uptick in streaming can already be seen in Nielsen’s May report of The Gauge, which saw streaming’s share of total television usage outpace the combined share of broadcast and cable for the first time ever. Beyond the streaming milestone, May is typically the lowest viewed month of the year, per Fuhrer, who noted that viewing slowly picks up in the summer before coming back in full force with football season in the fall.
Though overall TV viewing is down in the summertime as viewers enjoy the warmer weather outdoors and head on vacation, streaming typically takes a bigger piece of the overall viewing pie with an absence of sports and big releases on linear TV. “[Streaming] doesn’t have this competition that they face in the fall with sports, and also the corresponding originals that broadcast and cable introduced during that season,” Fuhrer said.
Streaming accounted for 44.8% of total TV usage in May 2025, the highest percentage the sector has seen this year, previously accounting for 44.3% in April, 43.8% in March, 43.5% in February and 42.6% in January. The same trend could be seen in 2024, when May saw the highest streaming percentage of the year with 38.8%, ticking up to 40.3% in June then 41.4% and 41% in July and August, respectively. May 2023 similarly saw usage rise to its highest of the year at 36.4% before rising to 37.7% in June, 38.7% in July — which marked the largest streaming percentage of all of 2023 — and 38.3% in August.
He also noted that though cable historically introduced their original series in the summer, much of those have moved to the fall, in alignment with broadcast channels. Buzzy series like HBO’s “The Gilded Age” and new shows like FX’s “Alien: Earth” and USA Network’s “The Rainmaker” will still debut on cable this summer.
Instead, Fuhrer noted that big streaming releases over the summer — which can be seen in the debuts of “Squid Game” Season 3 and “Wednesday” Season 2 on Netflix and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 on Prime Video — also help drive viewership to streaming.
Summer vacation also correlates to a higher percentage of kids and family programming, with family movies like “Moana 2,” which is about to approach 100 billion viewing minutes, and “The Wild Robot,” which was made available on Netflix in late May, resonating the most, Fuhrer explained. Notably, there isn’t too much of a boost for “Cocomelon” or “Bluey,” which is a mainstay on Nielsen’s weekly top 10 streaming charts, as those series resonate most with kids age 5 and under who aren’t in school yet.
Fuhrer also noted with school out for the summer, kids ages 12-17 often use moviegoing as an escape to get out of the house, though there’s plenty of families still waiting for movies to drop on streaming. “Whenever movies come out, they drop on one of the streaming services, they dramatically over-index among Hispanic homes,” Fuhrer said.
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