HBO Max Debuts in Nielsen’s Monthly Platform Rankings

HBO Max commanded enough of TV viewers’ time in April to be name-checked in Nielsen’s monthly platform rankings.

The Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service was responsible for 1 percent of total TV usage for the month — just enough to break it out of the “other streamers” category in April’s Gauge snapshot. HBO Max had both the streaming premiere of The Batman and the debut of season two of The Flight Attendant in April.

Streaming as a whole had its highest share of TV usage for the second straight month, rising above 30 percent for the first time. TV viewers spent 30.4 percent of their time on streaming platforms, up from 29.7 percent (the previous high) in March.

Overall TV use fell by about 2 percent month to month, but streaming held fairly steady while broadcast and cable slipped a little bit — thus leading to streamers reaching a high in share of viewing.

Cable remained the largest piece of the TV pie with 36.8 percent of viewing time, off a tick from March. Sports viewing on cable rose, thanks to college basketball’s Final Four and the start of the NBA playoffs, but news viewing shrank for the first time in several months. Broadcast shrunk by two tenths to 24.7 percent, driven by a fall-off in sports viewing and dramas. Other TV use, including gaming and physical media playback, accounted for the remaining 8.2 percent.

Among individual streamers, Netflix (6.6 percent of all TV usage) and YouTube (6.1 percent), both of which are in line with their shares from the previous month.

Nielsen’s April Gauge rankings are below.

Platforms

Cable: 36.8 percent
Streaming: 30.4 percent
Broadcast: 24.7 percent
Other: 8.2 percent

Streaming Services

Netflix: 6.6 percent
YouTube (including YouTube TV): 6.1 percent
Hulu (including Hulu + Live): 3.3 percent
Prime Video: 2.5 percent
Disney+: 1.7 percent
HBO Max: 1 percent
All others: 9.2 percent