Older Viewers Fuel YouTube Move to No. 1 Among TV Distributors in February – Hollywood Reporter
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterThe service supplants Disney atop the Nielsen list for the second time.
By
Rick Porter
Television Writer
YouTube commanded more TV time than any other media provider in the United States in February, and its top ranking was thanks in part to viewers over the age of 50.
The service accounted for 11.6 percent of all TV use in the country in Nielsen‘s rankings of media distributors for the February period (which ran from Jan. 27-Feb. 23). That’s an all-time high for YouTube and the second time it has placed atop the distributor rankings; it previously did so in July 2024.
YouTube improved from 10.8 percent of TV use in January and passed Disney (10 percent) for the overall spot among TV content distributors. Nielsen notes that the rise for YouTube was fueled partly by a somewhat surprising source: people over 50, who accounted for about 36 percent of all time spent watching YouTube on TV screens — more than the combined 28 percent for teenagers and adults 18-34. The media distributor rankings don’t include viewing on computers or mobile devices, which means the demographics Nielsen cited might not be fully representative of YouTube’s total usage across all devices.
Fox moved into third place in February — its highest ranking to date — thanks in large part to a record-setting Super Bowl. It claimed 8.3 percent of U.S. TV use, edging ahead of Netflix and Paramount (8.2 percent each and both down a little from January).
February’s Media Distributor Gauge numbers are below.
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