YouTube accounted for 12.4% of U.S. television watch-time in Nielsen’s April 2025 Media Distributor Gauge, ranking first among media distributors for the third consecutive month. Disney was second at 10.7%, followed by Paramount at 8.9%. The measurement covered March 31 through April 28, 2025, and counted viewing on television screens—not all viewing across phones, tablets, and computers.
The result is a milestone in YouTube’s growing role in the living room, not proof that it had more subscribers than Disney or Netflix, or that a single YouTube program beat their shows. Nielsen compares distributors’ combined viewing across relevant properties, so the ranking is broader than an app-versus-app or program-versus-program contest. Nielsen’s April 2025 report provides figures for YouTube, Disney, and Paramount; it does not state a separate Netflix percentage.
What the April 2025 ranking showed
| Distributor | Share of total TV viewing | What Nielsen reported |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 12.4% | First place for a third consecutive month; its largest share at that point. |
| Disney | 10.7% | Second place, up 0.2 percentage points from March. |
| Paramount | 8.9% | Third place and the largest monthly share increase among media companies. |
| Netflix | Not stated in Nielsen’s April release | The release does not give a separate Netflix percentage, so it does not establish a Netflix-versus-YouTube margin. |
YouTube’s 12.4% was 0.4 percentage points above its March 2025 share and 2.8 points above its 9.6% share in April 2024. Nielsen also said April was the first month since the Media Distributor Gauge began in November 2023 that the full company ranking held unchanged from the previous month. These figures and comparisons are from Nielsen’s April results.
What Nielsen counted—and what it did not
Nielsen’s The Gauge tracks U.S. television use across broadcast, cable, and streaming. Its Media Distributor Gauge, introduced in April 2024, groups viewing by distributor or media company rather than ranking only individual streaming apps. Nielsen designed it as a cross-platform comparison: a company’s relevant broadcast, cable, and streaming properties can contribute to its total. Nielsen’s launch explanation describes that approach.
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The April report’s measurement interval was March 31–April 28, 2025, following Nielsen’s broadcast-calendar weeks; it was not simply every day of the calendar month. The comparison concerns viewing through a television screen. It should not be read as total video consumption across devices, a measure of how many people watched, or a ranking of subscribers. Nor should “YouTube” automatically be read as the paid multichannel service YouTube TV.
That scope matters when interpreting the headline. YouTube is a video platform, while Disney and Paramount are portfolios of media properties. The gauge makes their television-screen viewing comparable as distributor totals, but it does not make their business models or content libraries identical. The released figures also do not support a precise claim that YouTube beat Netflix by a particular amount.
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Why a platform built around creators matters on television
YouTube’s first-place share reflects the scale of its viewing ecosystem on the TV set: creator-made and user-uploaded videos sit alongside music, news, sports, podcasts, livestreams, clips, and professionally produced programming. A continuous supply of varied material can draw viewers back frequently, while longer videos and living-room viewing make the platform relevant to the same screen used for traditional channels and subscription services.
This is a change in what people watch through television, not the disappearance of television as a device. Nielsen counted YouTube as TV viewing when people watched it on a TV screen. The result says nothing by itself about whether that viewing earned as much advertising revenue per hour as a broadcast, cable, or subscription-streaming hour, or about relative profitability.
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Disney’s April share also reflected sports and a hit series
Disney’s 10.7% share rose 0.2 points from March. Nielsen attributed support in part to cross-network coverage of the NFL Draft, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, and the first round of the NBA Playoffs—illustrating how a company’s portfolio can bring together broadcast, cable, and streaming viewing.
Streaming contributed too. Nielsen ranked The White Lotus first in its Streaming Top 10 for the weeks of March 31–April 6 and April 7–13, with 1.31 billion and 1.25 billion viewing minutes, respectively. Those series figures are streaming minutes, not Disney’s total distributor share; they help show why a multi-property company’s ranking can reflect both live sports and on-demand programming. See Nielsen’s April distributor report.
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Streaming was approaching broadcast and cable combined
YouTube’s rise came as streaming as a whole claimed a larger portion of television use. Streaming accounted for 44.3% of total TV viewing in April 2025, compared with 45.3% for broadcast and cable combined. Nielsen reported streaming usage was up 15% year over year and its share had gained 5.9 percentage points since April 2024. These are category-level figures from Nielsen’s April Gauge report.
That broader shift helps explain why a digital video platform can lead a distributor ranking measured on television sets. YouTube was not just taking share within a static streaming category: streaming itself was nearing the combined share of broadcast and cable. The comparison is about attention on the TV screen, however, not an automatic proxy for revenue, audience reach across all devices, or the health of any one company.
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Was YouTube’s lead a one-month spike?
The April result was a period-specific ranking, but it was not an isolated first-place month. YouTube had led for three consecutive months by April 2025, and Nielsen reported a 12.5% share in May 2025, extending its run to four months. In the later April 2026 report, it remained first at 13.4%, with Disney at 10.3%. The later snapshots support a sustained trend in TV-screen viewing, not a guarantee that the ranking can never change.
Monthly shares can move with sports schedules, major premieres, seasonal habits, and distributors’ content and release strategies. For that reason, the April 2025 numbers should be understood as a milestone in a developing shift, not a permanent takeover. See Nielsen’s May 2025 report and April 2026 report.
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