Thanks to the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal — with an assist from the recently spun off Versant — dethroned YouTube for the largest share of TV viewing in February.
Nielsen released both its monthly Gauge summary of viewing by platform and its Media Distributor Gauge for the reach of TV use by company on Tuesday. The stats were held back for several weeks due to some Nielsen clients pushing back on a change in how the ratings provider assembled its Gauge data.
Briefly: Nielsen was planning to supplement its data with that from a group called the Advertising Research Foundation that would likely have shown a dip in streaming’s share of total TV use. A number of clients balked at that idea, and in late March, Nielsen decided both to hold back on releasing the monthly numbers and not make any changes to its current Gauge methodology until the 2026-27 TV season, when it will more closely align with the company’s currency ratings products that are used to set ad rates across the industry.
“The Gauge and Media Distributor Gauge (MDG) do not reflect Nielsen’s currency TV ratings,” a note with the February release reads. “Nielsen is working on updates to The Gauge and MDG reports to better reflect and include currency enhancements for the Fall TV season, at which time Nielsen will provide additional back data to clients to assist in the transition.”
To those numbers for February: NBCUniversal and Versant combined for 13.1 percent of all TV use in the February reporting period (which covered Jan. 26-Feb. 22), with the Super Bowl and Olympics accounting for a huge portion of the spike from 8.5 percent in January (Nielsen reports the two companies together because NBCU sells ads for both.) NBCU had 10 percent on its own, while Versant accounted for 3.1 percent.
The combined total ended a year-long streak for YouTube at the top of the media distributor charts, despite YouTube’s share of all viewing rising a little in February (12.7 percent, up from 12.5 percent in January).
Streaming platforms had 48 percent of all viewing in February, with a big gain for NBCU’s Peacock accounting for much of the growth. Peacock had its highest monthly share in the five-year history of the Gauge, scoring 3 percent of all TV viewing thanks to the Super Bowl and Olympics. Aside from small upticks for YouTube, Disney (5 percent) and Tubi (2.2 percent), most streamers lost a bit of share compared to January.
Broadcast viewing edged up to 21.7 percent (from 21.5 percent) in February, again likely attributable to the Super Bowl and Olympics. Outside of those, CBS’ Grammy Awards telecast was the most watched program of the month. With the NFL and college football seasons over, cable took a step back to just 20 percent of all viewing, despite an overall increase in cable news viewing and big, winter games-fueled growth for USA Network.
The Gauge and Media Distributor Gauge numbers for February are below.
