Driven by kids whiling away their summers online, YouTube surpassed Disney as the most watched TV programming supplier in July, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge report, published Tuesday.
The audience measurement firm found that American viewers devoted 10.4% of their total TV watching time to YouTube. It's the first time a streaming company has held a monthly share of more than 10% of total American viewership in a given month, according to Nielsen.
The increase was driven largely by the summertime seasonality of school-aged viewers (age 17 and under), who accounted for almost 30% of YouTube’s monthly viewership. School-aged children also made up 13% of all TV viewing regardless of platform — the largest total for that age demographic since July 2023.
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Disney, which had previously reigned as the largest distributor since Nielsen first published the Media Distributor Gauge in April, fell back to second place with 9.9% of TV usage.
However, year-to-date numbers still show Disney in the lead among media distributors with 11% of TV viewing through seven months of rankings, followed by Youtube at 9.6% and NBCUniversal at 9.1%.
TV viewing in July was also impacted by coverage of the Republican National Convention, which boosted Fox into the top five with 7.4% of total viewing.
Fox’s new share, which puts it equal with Paramount, marks its largest portion of TV viewing so far this year.
NBCUniversal also saw an increase in viewership to third place with 9.5%, largely due to the few days of Olympics coverage included in Nielsen’s July reporting interval.
That small window of time was apparently enough to boost the company’s share by a full percentage point, compared to June.
That put NBCU even further ahead of Netflix, which ranked fourth for the month of July with an 8.4% share.
Overall, the streaming category accounted for 41.4% of TV viewing in July — the highest share ever recorded by Nielsen.
Meanwhile, broadcast viewing accounted for 20.3% of TV viewing, while cable made up 26.7%.
