Just How Close Is Streaming to Overtaking Linear Viewership?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Nielsen data from February revealed that streaming was less than 1% away from accounting for more TV usage than cable and broadcast combined.
While this overtaking has appeared imminent for years, February was the closest it has ever been to actually occurring. Cable and broadcast accounted for a combined total of 44.4% of TV usage, per Nielsen’s The Gauge report, compared to the 43.5% of TV usage enjoyed by streaming. Nielsen’s “Other” category accounted for the final 12.1%.
The fact that streaming nearly overtook linear media in the month of February is of special note, as February is traditionally a very strong month for cable and broadcast due to the Super Bowl, along with multiple award shows taking place. These mainstays, however, have found homes on streaming as well as on traditional formats, leaving linear media with few bastions of highly desirable content to draw viewers with.
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Streaming exploded during the pandemic, but live sports and live news have been the key offerings keeping cable and broadcast afloat. Slowly but sure, though, live sports have transitioned onto streaming, with every major event now available to stream alongside its cable broadcast. The Super Bowl was no exception, as Fox offered the game for free on its free streamer Tubi. As a result, Tubi accounted for 2% of all TV usage in February, its highest percentage since July 2024. The aforementioned award shows are also no longer exclusive to linear TV either, as all of them were available to stream this year too.
Meanwhile, live news is primarily still only available through linear television, but that will change by the end of this year. The legacy media companies understand that live news cannot support the entire cable ecosystem on their own, and thus they are jumping ship to their parent company’s live streaming service. Even Fox, which does not have a streaming service to jump to, is making the switch with the company planning on launching a new streaming service later this year to stream its news along with the sporting events it holds rights to.
While it is true that cable and broadcast will not utterly collapse the second their TV usage is overtaken by streaming, it will signify a major shift in the market, providing perhaps the most triumphant evidence that streaming killed traditional TV.
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