Report: US social viewership NFL, network news focused
October 26, 2023
Social video intelligence specialist Tubular Labs has released its latest US viewership trends from its Audience Ratings product – giving insight into deduplicated, unique viewership and minutes watched of trending video categories, creators and more across YouTube and Facebook.
Top takeaways include:
NFL TV Rights Holders Grow Video Audience
September marked the return of NFL action, and with it, larger US audiences for the league’s TV rights holders. The Walt Disney Company (+4 per cent), Paramount (+2 per cent), Comcast (+4 per cent) and Fox Corporation (+14 per cent) all increased domestic unique viewers across Facebook and YouTube month over month – partly on the back of football highlights.
After a summer hampered by work stoppages, the media giants all saw significant improvements from 12 months ago. Disney grew from 132.0 million to 161.4 million viewers year-over-year, while Paramount jumped from 139.9 million to 160.3 million viewers. Comcast was up from 125.3 million to 158.3 million, and Fox flew from 66.2 million viewers to 93.9 million.
All the News You Can View(s)
Cable and broadcast news surged in September 2023, as US audiences tuned in to stay informed – but also for less newsworthy fodder as well.
On the broadcast front, NBC News saw its US unique viewers across Facebook and YouTube climb by 19 per cent month-over-month to 44.2 million. ABC News grew 3 per cent, to 30.6 million (and also grew minutes watched by 14 per cent month-over-month), while CBS News saw 51 per cent more unique viewers in September. Audiences were primarily watching local videos of surprising incidents that had virality to them.
Cable news saw its own increases as well. CNN’s US unique viewers grew by 7 per cent month-over-month, Fox News was up 4 per cent and MSNBC climbed 1 per cent. For cable news creators, the most-watched videos of the month were primarily focused on national politics (and particularly, Donald Trump).
Kids Diana Show Outlasts Creator Peers
While school starting again usually means a dip for individual creator video viewers and minutes watched – and it did for the overwhelming majority of creators in September 2023 – there were some exceptions to that rule. Most notably, Kids Diana Show stood apart from others, as one of just three of the top 20 US creators/influencers to increase domestic minutes watched in September.
Kids Diana Show grew US minutes watched across Facebook and YouTube 46 per cent vs. August, to 421.5 million, while also growing unique US viewers on those platforms by 25 per cent. Along with new videos on popular topics such as first day of school, mermaids and Paw Patrol, the channel also creates compilation videos of ‘top moments’ from previous videos. In September, compilation Diana and Roma Top Videos With Mom” was the top video with over 15 million views.