Nielsen has released its latest “Gauge” data update for April 2025, which gives a broad overview of how Americans watch television, including linear and streaming services like Disney+ and Hulu.  

According to the most recent report, YouTube maintained its lead for the third consecutive month among media companies, representing 12.4% of audiences’ time spent watching television.

Disney held the second largest share of TV in both April and March, and this month represented 10.7% of total television. Disney’s 0.2 point gain over March was partly driven by cross-network coverage of the NFL Draft, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship and the first round of the NBA Playoffs. Disney also owned April’s top streaming title, “Grey’s Anatomy”, which notched 3.9 billion viewing minutes and benefited from its multichannel and multiplatform availability. 

Paramount comprised 8.9% of total TV watch-time in April and exhibited the largest monthly share increase among media companies (+0.4 points, which, based on unrounded figures, was slightly larger than YouTube’s increase). Viewership gains to its CBS broadcast affiliates drove more than half of Paramount’s monthly growth. NBCUniversal rounded out the top four media distributors in April with an 8.2% share of TV, up from 8.0% in March.

April 2025 marked the first time that company rankings in the Media Distributor Gauge remained unchanged month over month since Nielsen began tracking this data in November 2023.

Earlier this year, Nielsen made a change to its Gauge data, bringing together all of Disney’s three streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ into a single entity called “Disney Streaming” since all three could be viewed within Disney+.   It also did the same for Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery.  

Roger’s Take: The monthly Gauge data from Nielsen is always a good indication of how the American audience is consuming its television.  YouTube continues to move away from the rest of the studios, though it has a very different model of creating content than the other studios, since it’s all user-generated, compared to the others, which create the content for themselves. 

What did you watch on TV in April?  Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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