Super Bowl Sunday Sets Viewing Time Record, But TV Use Falls in February
Americans spent more time with their TV sets on Super Bowl Sunday than any day in the past three years — but despite that, overall TV usage declined some in February.
On Feb. 11, viewers in the United States spent a collective 111 billion minutes watching TV — fueled, obviously, by Super Bowl 58’s record-breaking audience of more than 123 million viewers across all platforms. That’s the highest single-day viewing tally since Nielsen began tracking total TV usage in May 2021. With a running time of just over four hours, the Super Bowl totaled about 30.4 billion minutes of viewing on its own, and post-game coverage on CBS tallied 2.15 billion more minutes.
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The previous single-day high for total TV use came on Jan. 16, 2022, a day featuring three NFL playoff games. That day totaled about 108 billion minutes of viewing time.
Even with the huge Super Bowl numbers and the premieres of more than 20 network series, overall TV use in February fell by 6.4 percent from January’s multi-year highs, according to Nielsen’s monthly Gauge report. Broadcast and cable outlets carried most of the declines, combining for just 50.9 percent of overall TV viewing (23.3 percent for broadcast and 27.6 for cable), down from a combined 52.1 percent in January. The 27.6 percent share of viewing for cable was the lowest since Nielsen began releasing its monthly Gauge rankings.
Streaming platforms, however, had their biggest month since August 2023, capturing 37.7 percent of TV use. Other TV usage, including gaming and physical media playback, accounted for the remainder. A good portion of streaming’s gains came from FAST services, with Tubi (1.7 percent of all TV use) and the Roku Channel (1.2 percent) each hitting highs. YouTube also had its best Gauge showing to date with 9.3 percent of all TV use.
Nielsen’s Gauge rankings for February 2024 are below.
Platforms
Streaming: 37.7 percent of all TV use
Cable: 27.6 percent
Broadcast: 23.3 percent
Other: 11.3 percent
(Due to rounding by Nielsen, percentages don’t total 100.)
Streaming Services
YouTube: 9.3 percent of all TV use
Netflix: 7.8 percent
Hulu: 2.8 percent
Prime Video: 2.8 percent
Disney+: 1.9 percent
Tubi: 1.7 percent
Peacock: 1.4 percent
Max: 1.3 percent
Roku Channel: 1.2 percent
Paramount+: 1.1 percent
Pluto TV: 0.8 percent
All others: 5.6 percent
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