Netflix U.S. Viewing to Surpass ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC by 2016: Analysts
If Netflix were a Nielsen-rated TV network, the No. 1 streaming service would, within a year, attain a larger 24-hour audience than each of the major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC — according to a Wall Street analyst firm.
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-2015, Wall Street analysts projected that Netflix would, within about a year, draw a larger 24-hour U.S. audience than each of the four major broadcasters — ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC — if it were measured as a Nielsen-rated network. At the time the claim was framed as a hypothetical, since Netflix sat outside Nielsen's ratings.
The subsequent coverage arc reads as that projection being validated in stages: by early 2020 streaming was 19% of US TV time with Netflix at 31% of it (streaming made up 19% of US TV watching), and in July 2022 streaming passed both cable and broadcast for the first time at 34.8% share, with Netflix holding 8% (streaming took the largest share of US TV viewing).
First-order effects
- ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC lose the defensible claim to the largest single audiences in American television; the biggest 24-hour audience belongs to a service that sells subscriptions, not commercial slots.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers' reach math shifts toward streaming inventory, which is why Netflix can later argue its ad-supported tier reaches more 18- to 34-year-olds than any US broadcast or cable network with 94M monthly users (94M MAUs on the ad tier).
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, broadcast networks are structurally repositioned from primary audience aggregators to live-events-and-local specialists, while measurement bodies like Nielsen rebuild their methodology around services that never fit the channel-based model.
The trend: US television is consolidating around streaming services as the primary audience aggregators, with broadcast networks ceding scale-first status to subscription platforms.