News Consumption in April Boosts Cable’s Share of TV, according to Nielsen’s Latest Report of The Gauge

According to Nielsen’s April 2023 report of The Gauge™, the media measurement company’s monthly snapshot of total broadcast, cable and streaming consumption that occurs through a television, cable was the only category to record an increase in share this month (+0.4 pts.), boosted by an upswing in cable news viewing. This gain for cable also represents the first back-to-back share increase for the category since the inception of The Gauge in May 2021.

With a decrease of 1.9% from March to April, total TV usage in the U.S. declined for the third consecutive month, a trend that is typical as the summer months approach. By comparison, time spent watching TV declined 2.1% over the same period in 2022.

The cable category exhibited the smallest dip in viewing across all categories in The Gauge this month, decreasing 0.6% vs. March, and was able to gain 0.4 share points to account for 31.5% of total TV viewing in April. Cable news viewing increased 4.3% from March to April and accounted for the largest portion of cable viewing (19%). Year-over-year, time spent watching cable content was down 12.0% in April 2023, and the category has lost 5.3 share points.

At 23.1% share of total TV, broadcast viewing was down 2.7% in April and the category lost 0.2 share points on the month. The completion of the NCAA basketball tournament, and The Masters golf tournament, were the most-watched broadcast programs in April, but broadcast sports viewing overall dipped 17.1% vs. March to account for 9.6% of the category. The general drama genre increased 2.1% in April, driven by titles like NCIS, Blue Bloods and Chicago Fire. From a year-over-year perspective, broadcast viewership was down 3.7%, and the category has lost 1.6 share points.

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Time spent with streaming content was down 2.1% in April compared with March, and the streaming category recorded a loss in share (-0.1 pts.) for the second consecutive month. However, streaming still concluded the month with the largest share of TV at 34.0%.

Offsetting April’s dip in streaming consumption were the FAST (free ad-supported TV) offerings of Tubi TV and Pluto TV. Tubi TV usage was up 6% from March, and the platform added 0.1 share point to capture 1.1% of overall TV, and Pluto TV viewing increased 3.9% on the month to stay at 0.8% of TV. In March 2023, Pluto TV exhibited the largest increase in usage across all streaming platforms at 4.6%. Additional streaming highlights:

• Time spent watching YouTube (excluding YouTube TV) on television increased 1.5% in April, which led to a gain of 0.3 share points and upheld YouTube as the most-watched streaming platform at 8.1% of overall TV usage.
• Despite having the two most-watched streaming titles in April (The Night Agent and Love is Blind), Netflix was down 7% in usage vs. March and lost 0.4 share points to finish at 6.9% of total TV.
• Disney+ was down 1.7% in usage but retained its 1.8% share of television on the strength of The Mandalorian, which was the third most-watched streaming title in April.

Viewing via MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) and vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) streaming apps represented 5.4%* of total television use in April, including 1.2% attributed to YouTube TV, and 0.4% to Hulu Live.

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