NYE, Golden Globes and scripted dramas also elevate broadcast viewing.
Netflix achieves a new platform record, powered by 9B viewing minutes of Squid Game'
January 11 clocks 47 billion daily streaming minutes, supercharged by Prime Video's exclusive NFL Wild Card game
NEW YORK - February 18, 2025 - Nielsen's January 2025 report of The Gauge revealed that TV viewing in January was up 5% compared with an already robust December, driven largely by current events and seasonal factors. Football again played a significant role in January's monthly viewing uptick, with games across the NFL and NCAA drawing big audiences and contributing to share increases for both broadcast ( 0.1pt., 22.5%) and cable ( 0.6pt., 24.4%).
The NFL AFC Championship game on CBS drew this month's largest audience with 57.4 million viewers on Sunday, January 26, followed by the NFC Championship game, which brought in 44.2 million viewers on FOX on the same day. Coverage of the College Football Playoffs on ESPN, in addition to other various bowl games, helped drive a 42% bump in cable sports viewing in January. What's more, the seven CFP games included in the January report (four Quarterfinals, two Semifinals and the National Championship) accounted for the top seven cable telecasts this month, led by the 22.1 million viewers that watched the National Championship Game on January 20.
January also highlighted how consumers' viewing habits have evolved to become more flexible when seeking out preferred content across various distribution platforms. Prime Video exclusively streamed the NFL Wild Card playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens on January 11, which in turn helped drive the second-highest day of streaming on record. Behind the current all-time high of 51.2 billion streaming minutes set on Christmas Day 2024, January 11, 2025 produced over 47 billion streaming minutes in total.
Outside of sports events, traditional television drew audiences by other means as well. Overall broadcast viewing was up 5.1% in January, benefiting from increases to drama series ( 15%) and news ( 18%). The top non-sports broadcast telecasts in January were an eclectic mix led by ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve with 17.9 million viewers, followed by the post-AFC Championship premier of Watson on CBS with 10.8 million, and the Golden Globe Awards on CBS with 9.7 million. Meanwhile, cable viewing exhibited a 7% monthly increase, and, in addition to the 42% lift in sports viewership, cable also benefited from a 26% increase in news viewing. FOX News Channel dominated non-sports telecasts this month, led by its Inauguration Day coverage.
From a streaming perspective, streaming viewership in January was up 3% versus December and the category accounted for the largest share of television with 42.6%. On a year-over-year basis, streaming usage grew 21% compared with January 2024, and the category has gained 6.6% share of TV viewing.
Notable among streaming platforms:
Netflix followed a robust December with an even stronger January, as viewership rose 7% to lead the streamer to a new platform record of 8.6% of TV. Netflix's big month was due in large part to Squid Game, which generated 9 billion viewing minutes as January's top streaming title.
The Roku Channel also extended its growth streak and notched a fourth consecutive month of platform-best achievement, increasing viewership by 9% in January to reach 2.1% of TV.
As indicated in the December 2024 Gauge report, this marks the first month that Disney's streaming entities (Disney , Hulu and ESPN ) are consolidated into a single share. Disney Streaming began the year with a 4.7% share of TV. Bluey, which received Nielsen's first ARTEY Award for top streaming title in 2024, was January's second most-streamed program with 4.7 billion viewing minutes accumulated on Disney .
The Paramount original series Landman rounded out the top three streaming titles in January with 4.4 billion viewing minutes, and helped the streamer tie its platform best share with 1.4% of TV.
Note: Disney , Hulu and ESPN viewing have been aggregated into a single total represented as Disney Streaming beginning with the January 2025 Gauge report. This change is due to Disney making Hulu and ESPN content available within the Disney app for certain subscribers, which could affect crediting between Disney's streaming properties as it relates to The Gauge.
-- The January 2025 interval dates included 12/30/2024 through 01/26/2025. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar with measurement weeks that run Monday through Sunday.
About The Gauge The Gauge is Nielsen's monthly snapshot of total broadcast, cable and streaming consumption that occurs through a television screen, providing the industry with a holistic look at what audiences are watching. The Gauge was expanded in April 2024 to include The Media Distributor Gauge, which reflects total viewing by media distributor across these categories. Read more about The Gauge methodology and FAQs.
About NielsenNielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their global audiences-now and into the future. Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram).
Press ContactLauren Pabst
lauren.pabst@nielsen.com
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
NYE, Golden Globes and scripted dramas also elevate broadcast viewing.
