Thanks to the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal — with the help of recently created Versant — was able to dethrone YouTube for the largest share of TV viewing in February.
Nielsen on Tuesday released its monthly viewership by platform and media distributor metric summary of the extent of TV usage by the company. The statistics were delayed for several weeks because some Nielsen customers balked at a change in how the ratings provider collects its metric data.
In short: Nielsen was planning to supplement its data with that from a group called the Advertising Research Foundation that would likely show a decline in streaming’s share of total TV usage. A number of clients rejected that idea, and in late March, Nielsen decided to step back from releasing monthly numbers and not make any changes to its current metric methodology until the 2026-27 television season, when it will align more closely with the company’s currency ratings products that are used to set advertising rates across the industry.
“The metric and the Media Distributor (MDG) scale do not reflect Nielsen’s coin-op TV ratings,” it said in a note with the February release. “Nielsen is updating The Gauge and MDG reports to better reflect and include currency improvements for the fall TV season, at which time Nielsen will provide additional data to customers to help with the transition.”
On to these numbers for February: NBCUniversal and Versant together accounted for 13.1 percent of total TV usage in the February reporting period (which covered January 26-February 22), with the Super Bowl and the Olympics accounting for much of the uptick from January’s 8.5 percent (Nielsen reported the companies combined because NBCU sells ads for both.) NBCU took 10 percent on its own, while Versant took 3.1 percent.
The total ended a year-long streak of YouTube atop the media distributor charts, though YouTube’s share of total views rose slightly in February (12.7 percent, up from 12.5 percent in January).
Streaming platforms accounted for 48% of total viewing in February, with big gains for NBCU’s Peacock accounting for most of the growth. Peacock had its highest monthly share in the metric’s five-year history, recording 3 percent of total TV viewing thanks to the Super Bowl and the Olympics. Aside from small gains at YouTube, Disney (5 percent) and Tubi (2.2 percent), most streamers lost little share compared to January.
Broadcast viewership rose to 21.7 percent (from 21.5 percent) in February, again likely due to the Super Bowl and the Olympics. Outside of those programs, CBS’s Grammy Awards telecast was the most-watched program of the month. As the NFL and college football seasons ended, the cable network took a step back to just 20 percent of total viewership, despite an overall increase in cable news viewership and significant growth fueled by USA Network’s winter games.
Media meter and distributor figures for February are below.
