NEW YORK—January TV viewing hit a four-year high in January, according to Nielsen's The Gauge, with Peacock’s exclusive streaming of a NFL playoff game playing a notable role in the viewing spike.  

Nielsen said that January 13 marked the most-streamed day in history totaling 40.8 billion minutes streamed—a feat driven by Peacock's coverage of the first exclusively streamed NFL playoff game.

Other key factors in driving increased TV viewing included an abundance of high-volume streaming days, NFL playoffs, colder temperatures, and the long-awaited return of scripted broadcast programs, Nielsen said. 

Broadcast viewing was up 7.1% in January, which bumped its share to 24.2% of total TV.

In addition to the record streaming levels seen on January 13, Nielsen noted that January produced nine of the 10 highest daily streaming levels ever. 

Yearly TV usage is typically at its peak in January, Nielsen noted, with January 2024 viewing up 3.7% versus December. 

Nielsen said this monthly increase stands out, as viewing levels were 1.4% higher than in January 2023, which not only had a longer reporting period (5 wks. vs. 4 wks.), but also included the peak viewing week between Christmas and New Year's, and was not in short supply of new programming.

Additionally, January 2024 included three of the top 10 days of TV usage since the inception of The Gauge in May 2021 (Jan. 1, 14 and 28), and marked the highest monthly TV usage total since January 2020 (excluding 2020 pandemic lockdown months).

In a month of many high-impact days, streaming usage was up 4.1% over December to account for 36.0% of TV usage. Peacock led platforms from a growth perspective with a 29% monthly increase, pushing its share to a platform-best 1.6% of TV. 

YouTube notched its 12th consecutive month as having the largest share among streaming services, with 8.6% of TV usage. From a content perspective, streaming original titles appeared to show signs of revival in January following a dominant year for acquired content in 2023: Netflix's “Fool Me Once” was the first original to top the streaming charts since May 2023, totaling 6.5 billion viewing minutes across the month, and Reacher on Prime Video held the No. 4 spot with 4.3 billion minutes.

Broadcast viewing also showed significant gains. It was up 7.1% in January, which bumped its share to 24.2% of total TV. Sports viewing had the greatest impact on the category, notching a 36% monthly viewing increase to account for 28% of all broadcast viewing. Broadcast drama viewing was up over 20% following some of the first new content releases of the season, led by new episodes across NBC's Chicago franchise.

Cable viewing increased 2.7% over December, but fell to 27.9% of TV due to the larger increase of overall TV usage. ESPN's broadcast of the College Football Playoff game between Michigan and Alabama led all cable programs this month, followed by six more NFL and college football games. News viewing was up 8% and topped all cable genres this month, led by the Iowa Town Hall on Fox News Channel (No. 8 cable program in January, excluding sports commentary).

Linear (live TV) streaming via MVPD (multichannel video programming distributors) and vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributors) apps represented 6.2% of total television usage in January. Linear streaming is included in the appropriate broadcast or cable category, and is not included in the streaming category, Nielsen said. 

Comcast announced that its exclusive showing of the NFL Wild Card game between the Miami Dolphins and defending champions Kansas City Chiefs on its Peacock streaming service Saturday night was the largest live streaming event in U.S. history and breaking the record for the largest internet traffic usage on a single day, consuming 30% of internet traffic during the game.

In all, the game reached 27.6 million total viewers, according to Nielsen,  6% more viewers than last year's primetime AFC Wild Card contest, which garnered an average 21.8 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital.

Considering the NFL’s massive popularity, particularly during the playoffs, the numbers are hardly surprising. Comcast’s NBCUniversal division paid the NFL $110 million for the exclusive Peacock showing, which was originally reported back in May when most fans were paying little attention. This wasn't the first "exclusive" for Peacock, which exclusively streamed the regular season NFL matchup between the L.A. Chargers and the Buffalo Bills—but that was on Dec. 23 and wasn't an all important playoff. 

Comcast didn’t report how many subscriptions resulted from Saturday night’s game—which was simulcast live on NBC in Miami and Kansas City—but despite ticking off many viewers who resisted having to sign up for a streaming service to watch an NFL playoff game (and Taylor Swift)—Comcast was crowing about the results. 

“From NBC Sports and Peacock to the Comcast team, our entire company worked seamlessly to plan for this game and executed flawlessly to deliver a streaming experience with the NFL on a scale that’s never been done before. It’s a very proud moment,” said Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, in a statement.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league “couldn’t be prouder of our partnership with Peacock and are thrilled with the results of the first-ever exclusively live streamed NFL playoff game. To best serve our fans, we need to ensure games are available to them as their viewing habits change and this includes digital distribution as we continue to help shape the future of the sports and entertainment industry.”

It also came as no surprise that this exclusivity, a first for such a popular game, raised the ire of fans nationwide who took to social media to vent their anger. 

The frustration even reached the halls of Congress where Rep. Patrick Ryan (D-NY) fired off a letter to the NFL. 

"The NFL Playoffs will begin tomorrow, and millions of fans are looking forward to kicking back and watching their favorite teams play,” Ryan told NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “It’s a tradition as American as apple pie. For decades, NFL playoffs games have been widely available on national TV networks so that Americans can conveniently watch the playoffs at no additional cost.”

“Yet this year, you’ve decided to rip off fans by exclusively broadcasting tomorrow’s Chiefs vs. Dolphins wildcard game on Peacock. For the first time ever, fans will be forced to choose between signing up for yet another expensive streaming service or missing out on a major playoff game.”

Ryan said the situation was a “disgrace,” and claimed that viewers were being double-charged since they were already paying cable TV providers a fee for NBC. He urged NFL and NBC to broadcast the game on the network and stop such “exclusive” streaming deals, expressing doubt over whether exempting the league from antitrust rules was a good idea. 

“Congress granted the NFL an antitrust exemption in its broadcast deals with the expectation that you wouldn’t use it to screw over fans. That was clearly a mistake,” he wrote.

NEW YORK—There will be more playoff football starting with the 2020 NFL season, as NFL teams voted to expand the playoff format from 12 teams to 14. This expanded format will lead to two additional games being played in the Wild Card round, with CBS and NBC handling one each.

With the bump up to 14 teams, the seeding of the playoffs will be changed. The top team in both the AFC and NFC will receive a bye into the Divisional Round of the playoffs, while the remaining six teams in each conference will play on Wild Card weekend—#2 vs. #7, #3 vs. #6 and #4 vs. #5 in each conference.

The NFL has already scheduled its Wild Card round to take place on the weekend of Jan. 9-10, 2021, with three games played each day. The broadcast networks handling the NFL playoff games will remain the same as last year (ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC), but CBS and NBC will each have an additional game that will air on Jan.10.

The CBS game, which is scheduled for a 4:40 p.m. ET kickoff, will be available on CBS All Access as a livestream, while Nickelodeon—another ViacomCBS-owned broadcaster—will produce a separate simulcast of the game that will be tailored for a younger audience.

The NBC game, with a 8:15 p.m. ET kickoff, will be available on NBC, the Peacock streaming service and Telemundo.

At this time, the NFL plans for its season to start as scheduled, despite the current coronavirus pandemic. 

NEW ORLEANS—New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panther receivers and quarterbacks weren’t the only ones concerned about what was in and out of bounds Sunday (Jan. 7) in New Orleans during the NFC Wildcard game.

Fox Sports, which telecast the game, walked a different sort of line with its playoff coverage—one that delineates between delivering the great shots needed to present game action and some new tech implementation that actually gets in the way of coverage.

“We don’t want to make things all that different for the production team and give them a whole bunch of stuff that they haven’t had before for the big games,” says Mike Davies, SVP of Field and Technical Operations at Fox Sports. Rather, the strategy is to start with a “base layer” of production technology used throughout the 17 weeks of the regular season and then deploy choice pieces of technology that will have the biggest impact on game production and allow Fox Sports to tell the best story, he says.

“A lot of this stuff we’ve used before and some just this year,” says Davies. “We just pick the best of the best to represent us.”

For example, for the three NFL playoff games Fox Sports is covering the broadcaster will add a second, higher SkyCam to deliver a drone’s-eye view of plays that captures all 22 players on the field. “Although you think of how over the top two SkyCams might sound, it turns out to be very useful,” says Davies. Fox Sports first used the dual SkyCam setup during the preseason and then again in Week 5 for the Packers vs. Cowboys game. “I think that camera angle is new enough that we are still learning what it can do,” he says.

The broadcaster recognized the upper SkyCam “was something special” in Week 5 during a play involving Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliot. “He jumped over that pile and no camera, including the lower SkyCam, saw that he had reached out over the first down line [except for the new upper SkyCam],” he says. “At least for that moment, we were sold that this is something special and something we wanted to offer.”

However, camera enhancements—both in terms of numbers and applications—aren’t limited to the second SkyCam. For its NFL playoff coverage, Fox Sports will deploy seven 8x Super Mo cameras, rather than the typical five. Fox also will use 6x Super Mo for its SkyCams, which it first did for its Super Bowl LI coverage in February 2017.

“There are so many replay opportunities in football, and the Super Mo gives this crisp—almost cinematic—look at the action,” says Davies.

The sports broadcaster also will take advantage of work it has done this year with Sports Media Technologies (SMT), SkyCam and Vizrt “to cobble together a recipe” to do augmented reality with the SkyCam, he says. Not only does the setup allow Fox Sports to put a live yellow line on the field of play with its SkyCam shots, but also to put graphic billboards and other 2-D graphics on the field and to fly around them with the SkyCam as if they were real objects.

“It’s a bit of an orchestration because the pilot of the SkyCam needs to be flying around the object as if it were an object on the field. If you break through it, it’s not going to look real,” says Davies.

Another enhancement is how Fox Sports will use its pylon cameras, says Davies. Rather than pointing the pylon cams positioned at the front of the end zone down the field, Fox will rotate them so they look down the field at a 45 degree angle, says Davies.

“That gives you a way to cover a play where the camera is actually looking. Yes, you have the goal line, but you also have the out-of-bounds line as well,” he says. As a result, there are more game situations in which the pylon cameras can contribute to coverage. “The pylon cameras are a lot like catching lightning in a bottle. They are great, but you don’t want to use them unless you’ve got something that is really compelling,” says Davies.

While it is too soon to tell if the drop in viewership plaguing the league this season will carry over to the playoffs, Davies is confident that the right technology and production techniques have the potential to help fans reconnect with the game.

“I feel that what we are able to do using all of this incredible technology—the dual SkyCams, the Super Mo’s and the pylons—is that we are able to deliver that kind of experience in replay right after the play that also shows the emotions of players, not just what happens between the whistles,” he says.

Harkening back to his stint at HBO, Davies recalls the connection the cinematic style used for “Inside the NFL”created as “you watched a game that happened three or four days prior.” Today’s production tools give broadcasters that same opportunity to create that connection, he says. “I can’t help but think that these kind of storytelling tools, honestly, can only help,” says Davies.

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y.—With so many fans turning in to watch the NFL playoffs, MultiDyne is helping provide unique coverage of the games for CBS and Fox with its fiber-optic signal transport technology combined with the SkyCam robotic camera rig. SkyCam units will be part of the upcoming coverage of the NFC and AFC Championship games on Sunday, Jan. 24, and for Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, Feb. 7.

SkyCam "WildCat" system

The SkyCam “WildCat” system is made up of a Sony HDC-P1 box style camera tethered to a gryo-stabilized, weatherproof housing that includes an HD-3500 multi-rate HD fiber-optic transport link from MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems. HD-3500 link converts the SDI video signal from the camera to optical so it can travel across a fiber-optic suspension cable. The MultiDyne HD-3500 RX unit is then located in the control room to receive the optical signal and convert it back to SDI to be used in the live broadcast. Another pair of HD-3500 units is used to send the signal from the control room to the production truck.

The HD-3500 provides a multi-rate HD fiber-optic transport link that supports HD-SDI video signals up to 1080p at 3G/s. It also supports two channels of outbound digital AES Audio or four analog audio channels with two bidirectional auxiliary audio channels for four-wire intercom, as well as two bidirectional RS-232 or RS 422 data channels, 4 GPI, and one tally.

The SkyCam system will be used by CBS for Super Bowl 50 at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

LOS ANGELES—It’s playoff football time, and the NFL wants to make sure that viewers don’t miss a second, announcing that all NFL playoff games would be streamed live online and on mobile devices. Starting with the Wild Card round over the weekend, viewers were able to watch any game via a desktop, tablet, smartphone or connected TV platform.

Each network is distributing live streams of its respective games through its own sites and applications. CBS Sports has all its games, including Super Bowl 50, available on CBSSports.com, as well as the NFL on Xbox One experience. Fox’s games are available through Fox Sports Go to customers of participating pay-TV providers on PCs, tablets, Android TV and Amazon Fire TV. NBC is streaming its games via NBC Sports Live Extra. ESPN’s coverage of playoff games and the 2016 Pro Bowl is streaming on WatchESPN.

All games are available on phones in the NFL Mobile from Verizon application, which works with Window, iOS and Android phones.

ESPN, Fox and NBC also are offering Spanish broadcasts of the games on TV and digital platforms.

For availability of each game, visit NFL.com/watch-nfl-games-online.