Nielsen’s The Gauge Streaming Ratings for March 2025

Streaming continued to expand its viewing consumption at the expense of the other TV segments during the month of March.

According to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge, overall TV watching was down by 6% compared with February, which was boosted by Super Bowl Sunday. With the Academy Awards and NCAA March Madness tournaments occurring during this past month, March was not devoid of tentpole events, but those events could not match the viewership pull of the Super Bowl.

Streaming consumption continues to grow, steadily eating away viewers from the other media segments. Streaming consumption grew by 0.3% from February to 43.8% of TV usage in March. New title releases aided streaming’s growth, with a record set this past month as the 10 most-watched streaming titles were distributed by seven different platforms: Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Paramount+ Netflix, and Apple TV+.  

The other segment to see growth in March was cable, with sports, especially March Madness, playing a huge role in growing its viewership consumption. The cable sector saw the most significant growth of all the categories, as it grew by 0.8% to stand at 24%. 

Broadcast and other were the categories that saw viewership consumption decrease in the month just concluded. Even with the presence of the Oscars, broadcast still couldn’t pull itself out of its viewership consumption slide, as it saw its usage fall for the second consecutive month to stand at 20.5%, down 0.7% compared with February. 

However, broadcast can celebrate the Oscars representing the most-watched program of the month, with 20.3 million viewers across ABC and the simulcast on Hulu. Once again, multiplatform distribution proved to be a winning formula, as streaming access reels in the younger demographics, with the 18-through-34 demo three times more likely and the 35-through-49 demo twice as likely to have watched the Oscars on Hulu.

Viewing usage in the other category declined from 12.1% in February to 11.7% in March.

When combined, the linear segment of broadcast and cable (44.5%) still performed better than streaming (43.8%). The gap is shrinking, though, as there was a 0.9% separation in February, which shrunk to 0.7% for March.  

YouTube remained the dominant player in the streaming category, with 12% of all viewing. It improved by 0.4% from its February performance (11.6%). 

Netflix followed with 7.9% of all total streaming consumption in March (down 0.3% from February). Disney+ was at 5% (up 0.2%). Prime Video remained steady at 3.5%, and its Reacher was the most-streamed program for the month with 6.6 billion total viewing minutes.

Paramount+ was next at 2.3% (up 1%), followed by Roku Channel at 2.2% (up 0.1%), and Tubi at 2% (down 0.1%). Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service leaped over Peacock at 1.5% (up 0.3%), while NBCUniversal’s streamer was at 1.4% (down 0.1%). The other streaming category saw consumption decrease by 0.1% to land at 6.1%.

See the media distribution ranking below: