MUMBAI: It was the month of the election and the results thereafter and then you had some great sports on air in the month of November 2024. So there’s no prizes for guessing that it was the month that the residents of Uncle Sam stayed glued a lot more to their TV sets to set a few viewing records.
The results from viewing monitor Nielsen’s The Gauge report bear this out. Time spent watching TV in November reached a nine-month high, according it, as viewing levels increased five per cent compared to October to record the largest monthly viewing total since February.
TV viewership in the November interval was impacted primarily by sports, the presidential election and live streaming, all of which drove peak shares of TV for viewing categories each in separate weeks this month. Additionally, as this interval ended on November 24, the typical Thanksgiving holiday surge in TV viewing will be included in the December report of The Gauge.
Broadcast viewing in November was up three per cent and accounted for 23.7 per cent of time spent watching TV. The first week of the interval was the most dominant for the broadcast category as it featured Games 3, 4 and 5 of the MLB World Series on Fox, in addition to the usual slate of NFL and college football games.
The final three World Series games totaled over 10 billion viewing minutes combined, and the Dodgers’ victory over the Yankees in the Game 5 conclusion drew 18.2 million viewers to make it the sixth most watched broadcast telecast this interval. This more concentrated week of broadcast sporting events lifted the category to a peak share of 24.9 per cent of TV in the first week of the month, and helped increase broadcast sports viewing by 34 per cent over October.
Coverage of the presidential election drove viewing increases in the second week of the month, most notably for cable. While cable ultimately finished with a 25 per cent share of viewing in November, its share during the week of the election jumped to 26.5 per cent of TV with much of the increase attributable to cable news. Interestingly, cable news viewing was up just one per cent on a monthly basis, but climbed from 36 billion viewing minutes to 48 billion viewing minutes between weeks one and two (+32 per cent) to give it the boost in share.
Streaming viewership increased 7.6 per cent in the November interval and the category posted a record share of TV with 41.6 per cent (+1.1 pt.). Some of this increase can be attributed to viewers seeking solace from the atypical, election-fueled news cycle covered by many traditional TV networks, and was also illustrated by the streaming category reaching 42.6 per cent of TV viewing during the third week of the interval.
Moreover, Netflix also exhibited peak viewership during week three when it hit 8.5 per cent of TV (compared to its overall monthly share of 7.7 per cent). This peak for Netflix coincides with the live-streamed Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, and was also fueled by viewing to its original series The Lincoln Lawyer, which was the most watched streaming program this interval with 3.9 billion viewing minutes.
There were also three streaming services that notched platform-best shares of TV in November, including The Roku Channel (up 12 per cent to 1.9 per cent of TV), Prime Video (up 10 per cent to 3.7 per cent of TV), and YouTube, which secured a new category record with 10.8 per cent of TV. Peacock, while short of its Olympics-driven platform record, still drew the largest monthly increase among streamers for 1.5 per cent of TV (+0.2 pt.). Peacock’s considerable increase was partially due to Despicable Me 4, which drove 1.5 billion viewing minutes and a 58 per cent increase in kids viewing on the platform.
