YouTube took a record 15.8% of U.S. TV viewing in August, Nielsen says

YouTube accounted for 15.8% of all viewing on U.S. television sets in August 2026, a platform record in Nielsen's monthly Gauge report, Nielsen said on October 22. YouTube's monthly viewing rose 6% even as total TV usage fell 4.4% from July.

Streaming as a whole took 49.6% of TV watch-time, up 0.6 share points from July. Nielsen tied the overall slowdown to “the quiet window between the World Cup’s July conclusion and the start of football season” and to the annual back-to-school drop in viewing among kids and teens.

How the categories moved

Share and volume moved in different directions. Streaming usage fell 3.2% in August, but total TV usage fell further, so streaming's slice of the total grew. Broadcast took the biggest hit: its viewing fell 14% from July and its share dropped 2.0 points to 17.5%, as sports fell to less than 9% of broadcast viewing from 30% in July. Cable usage fell 3%, yet its share rose 0.2 points to 18.9%.

Nielsen pointed to older viewers to explain YouTube's rise. While viewing among 6- to 17-year-olds faced back-to-school headwinds, YouTube benefited from a 9% increase in viewing among adults 50 and older.

A year of change

Against August 2025, the shifts are larger. Streaming's share is up 3.2 points from 46.4%, and YouTube's alone is up 2.7 points from 13.1%. Cable's share is down 3.6 points from 22.5%, and broadcast is 1.6 points below its 19.1% of a year earlier.

Streaming first passed the combined share of broadcast and cable in May 2025, when it reached 44.8% against 44.2% for the two together. In August 2026 the gap was far wider: 49.6% for streaming against 36.4% for broadcast and cable combined.

Media companies: Disney back at No. 2

In Nielsen's companion Media Distributor Gauge, which ranks media companies by their share of TV, YouTube stayed in first place. Disney added 0.4 points and returned to No. 2 with 9.3%. Netflix moved up to No. 3 with 7.7%, ahead of NBCU+Versant by 0.03 share points. Netflix's share compares with 8.7% in August 2025. Paramount was fifth with 6.8% and FOX sixth with 5.6%.

Nielsen reports NBCUniversal and Versant together because NBCUniversal still handles Versant's advertising sales. Among individual services, Peacock fell 1.0 point to 1.6% after Telemundo's World Cup coverage and the latest season of Love Island USA ended, but it was still 0.2 points above August 2025.

Why the next report will look different

August is the last month on the current method. The Gauge, the Media Distributor Gauge and the Ad Supported Gauge “will undergo a one-time methodology adjustment beginning with the September 2026 measurement interval to align with Nielsen’s TV currency data,” the company said, and it will publish the September and October intervals together later this year.

That matters for anyone tracking these shares over time. Nielsen says it is sharing impact data with clients but has not published the size of the adjustment, so a September figure that looks like a jump or a fall may partly reflect the new method rather than a change in what people watched.

The August interval covered five weeks, from July 27 to August 30, 2026. Nielsen reports on the broadcast calendar, with weeks beginning on Monday. For how The Gauge is built and what counts as streaming, see our explainer on Nielsen's Gauge.