It’s true that TV viewership reflects the availability of what people want to watch. Minus the Super Bowl, February 2023 had fewer high-demand, mass-appealing programs than January, which led to declines in viewership across broadcast, cable and streaming. January is always a banner month for TV viewing, highlighted by the culmination of the NFL season, which sets the bar very high.
Streaming platforms remained the favored destination for TV audiences, but overall viewing to streaming content was down 0.9% from January—the smallest decline across categories. Despite the drop in total streaming viewing, the category gained 1.5 share points to account for 34.3% of TV usage.
Within the streaming category, Tubi TV became the latest service to achieve a 1% share of TV usage, joining Pluto TV as the second free, ad-supported platform to be broken out from the “other streaming” category. Other streaming highlights in February included:
- New Amsterdam was the most-viewed streaming program, with 4.6 billion viewing minutes across Netflix and Peacock.
- The Last of Us was the second most-viewed program, with 4.4 billion viewing
minutes on HBO Max. - Viewing on YouTube (main) was up 2.5%.
- The arrival of a new season of You on Netflix generated 4.2 billion viewing minutes, but overall usage on the platform was down 6.7%.
