NEW YORK—New data from Nielsen’s The Gauge shows that the dynamics of a new school year and the return of football collided in August signaled by gains for traditional TV viewing of broadcast and cable outlets for the first time since April.
Nielsen’s monthly report of The Gauge, the media industry's leading snapshot of total TV and streaming consumption. Broadcast and cable combined to add a full percentage point in their share of total TV viewing over last month, representing a 19.1% share for broadcast and a 22.5% share for cable. That ended a three month-long decline for traditional TV.
Broadcast notched its largest share of TV since May as viewership climbed 1.1% on a monthly basis. Across the five-week measurement interval, the peak in broadcast viewership occurred during the final week of the month (08/25/25-08/31/25), coinciding with the official return of college football. Fox’s first Big Noon Saturday game of the season between Ohio State and Texas on August 30 drew the largest telecast audience this month with over 16.6 million viewers. ABC owned the next three top telecasts with college football games that each drew over 10 million viewers, including Notre Dame vs. Miami, Alabama vs. Florida State, and LSU vs. Clemson, Nielsen reported.
Cable viewing represented 22.5% of TV watch-time in August, gaining 0.3 share points versus July. Like broadcast, cable viewing was strongest in the final week of the interval, primarily among 18-49 year-olds. This peak was also driven by college football coverage, specifically on ESPN. Moreover, cable sports viewing in August was up 30% compared to the prior month, and represented over 9% of all cable viewership.
Time spent streaming declined over 4% in August compared to July and represented 46.4% of TV (-0.9 percentage points in its viewing share), the researchers at Nielsen explained.
Although monthly viewing levels were down for each streaming platform in The Gauge in August, one streamer managed to gain share: Prime Video added 0.1 point and finished the month with 3.9% of TV.
that was its best performance so far in 2025, and just shy of its platform record (4.0%) set in December 2024. Prime Video benefited from two of its original series, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “Ballard”, in addition to an NFL preseason game on August 21, Nielsen said.
Netflix accounted for 8.7% of TV watch-time in August (-0.1 point vs. July), and continued to dominate the month’s top streaming programs: Netflix originals Wednesday, “KPop Demon Hunters” and “The Hunting Wives”, plus acquired series “Sullivan’s Crossing”, took the top four slots and combined for over 22 billion viewing minutes across the five weeks of the interval.
Nielsen also noted that coming out of several consecutive streaming-heavy months, there was a decrease in viewing from younger audiences caused by back-to-school variables.
Time spent watching TV was down 2% overall in August versus July, but viewing among kids and teens (age 6-17) was down 9% over the same period. Additionally, when isolating watch-time by week among this age group, viewing levels between the first and last weeks of the interval (07/28/25-08/03/25 vs. 08/25/25-08/31/25) dropped 21%. Streaming usage among school-aged viewers also exhibited similar declines, dropping 8% on a monthly basis in August, and losing 22% from the first week versus the last week of the month.
The August 2025 interval spanned five weeks, from 07/28/2025 through 08/31/2025. Nielsen reporting follows the broadcast calendar, with weekly intervals beginning on Monday.
