YouTube has achieved a record share of the US streaming audience in December with 11.1% of TV watch time, according to The Gauge.
Nielsen’s barometer of streaming services also recorded a platform best of 4% for Prime Video, led by the Dwayne Johnson seasonal hokum Red One.
Netflix boosted its share by 14% on the strength of its NFL Christmas Day games, Taron Egerton thriller Carry-On and the return of Squid Game.
The December 2024 interval dates ran from 25 November to 29 December 2024. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar with measurement weeks that run Monday through Sunday.
Thanksgiving and Christmas Day also hosted the top six most watched telecasts of the month. These included the three Thanksgiving NFL games, led by the Giants vs. Cowboys on FOX with 38.5 million viewers, followed at No. 4 by NBC’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with 23.8 million viewers. The fifth and sixth top telecasts belonged to Netflix in its NFL debut on Christmas Day, whose two games each drew over 23 million viewers and helped bolster an already strong month for the streamer.
Netflix accounted for 8.5% of total TV viewing in December, tying its platform best share set in July 2023.
Netflix notched a 14% increase over the previous interval, and while some of that was attributable to the two NFL games, calculations showed the streamer’s monthly usage would have been up 11% even if contributions from the games were excluded. Netflix benefited from its action thriller film Carry-On, which generated 5.2 billion viewing minutes from Dec. 13 – 29 and achieved the third-most streamed title of the interval. It also received a boost following the Season 2 premiere of Squid Game, which accumulated 4.9 billion viewing minutes in the final week of the interval and also notched the highest weekly total (measured Monday through Sunday) for any streaming title in 2024.
On top of a 7.6% increase in November, streaming viewership climbed another 9% in December and the category secured a new Gauge record with 43.4% of total TV watch time.
