HBO Max had enough TV viewers in April to get a name check in Nielsen’s monthly platform leaderboard.
Streaming service Warner Bros. Discovery accounted for 1 percent of all TV usage that month — just enough to lift it out of the “other streamers” category in April’s Gauge snapshot. HBO Max premiered both The Batman and The Flight Attendant Season 2 for streaming in April.
Streaming as a whole had the highest share of TV usage for the second month in a row, rising above 30 percent for the first time. TV viewers spent 30.4 percent of their time on streaming platforms, up from 29.7 percent (the previous peak) in March.
Overall TV usage fell about 2 percent month-on-month, but streaming remained fairly stable, while broadcast and cable declined somewhat — resulting in streamers capturing a high share of viewing.
Cable remained the biggest piece of the TV pie with 36.8 percent viewing time, a tad less than in March. Thanks to college basketball’s Final Four and the start of the NBA playoffs, cable television sports coverage increased, but newscasts declined for the first time in several months. Transmission shrank two-tenths to 24.7 percent, driven by a drop in sports and drama. Other TV usage, including gaming and physical media playback, accounted for the remaining 8.2 percent.
Top performers among individual streamers were Netflix (6.6 percent of total TV usage) and YouTube (6.1 percent), both holding their shares from the previous month.
Nielsen’s April Gauge Rankings are below.
platforms
Cable: 36.8 percent
Streaming: 30.4 percent
Broadcast: 24.7 percent
Other: 8.2 percent
streaming services
Netflix: 6.6 percent
YouTube (including YouTube TV): 6.1 percent
Hulu (including Hulu + Live): 3.3 percent
Prime Video: 2.5 percent
Disney+: 1.7 percent
HBO Max: 1 percent
All others: 9.2 percent