Football Helps Cable, Broadcast Reclaim Some Viewers in August

Football Helps Cable, Broadcast Reclaim Some Viewers in August

The start of the college football season, and a large cohort of streaming-first viewers returning to school, put a stop to several months of declines in cable and broadcast TV viewing in August. Streaming still outdrew the combined TV use of cable and network outlets for the month, according to Nielsen’s Gauge numbers, but for…

The start of the college football season, and a large cohort of streaming-first viewers returning to school, put a stop to several months of declines in cable and broadcast TV viewing in August.

Streaming still outdrew the combined TV use of cable and network outlets for the month, according to Nielsen’s Gauge numbers, but for the first time April, linear outlets’ share of viewing increased over the previous month. Streamers, meanwhile, lost audience share for the first time since January.

Cable had 22.5 percent of all TV viewing in the United States for Nielsen’s August reporting period (which ran from July 28-Aug. 31), up from 22.2 percent in July. Broadcast networks collectively had 19.1 percent of viewing, vs. 18.4 percent (an all-time low in the four-year history of the Gauge reports). Streaming fell from a record high of 47.3 percent in July to 46.4 percent in August.

The return of football to TV screens played a big part in the uptick for traditional TV, as the sport is still largely a broadcast and cable product. Fox’s telecast of the heavily hyped Ohio State-Texas game on Aug. 30 was the most-watched linear telecast of the month with 16.6 million viewers, while three other games on ABC topped the 10 million mark. Cable sports viewing, also fueled by college football’s return, grew by 30 percent vs. July.

As millions of kids and teenagers began a new school year in August, their TV use predictably declined, which partly contributed to streaming’s small decline in viewing. People aged 6-17 watched 9 percent less TV than they did in July, a much larger drop than the overall 2 percent decline in viewing.

Individual streamers’ share of all TV was mostly flat or slightly down, with the top two platforms — YouTube (13.1 percent of all viewing, -0.3 points) and Netflix (8.7 percent, -0.1) —each losing a little bit.

Nielsen’s Gauge numbers for August 2025 are below.