In 2023, TV consumption in the United States was highest among African Americans, who watched an average of 3.28 hours of TV each day. While the viewing time dropped among white, Black, and Hispanic consumers, Asian Americans’ time spent grew from 2021 to 2022 to around two hours per day. TV and streaming engagement among racial groups As of mid 2022, The U.S. population still spent most of their time watching TV and streaming content on traditional media, such as cable and broadcast. Roughly 35 percent of their viewing time was allocated to streaming. It was also observed that Hispanics were more likely to use online video platforms than any other ethnic group, with a viewing time share of over 43 percent. By contrast, using streaming services accounted for around one third of the total viewing time among white and Asian consumers. Traditional TV vs. digital video The way consumers watch TV shows and movies has changed significantly. A forecast showed that traditional TV consumption among Americans will continue to steadily decline in the upcoming years. Meanwhile, with an increasing number of consumers adopting streaming and social videos, digital video soars, outpacing TV viewing time by the end of 2023.

The graph shows the share of internet users who watch television live on broadcast TV channels worldwide in 2017, by region. According to the source, 88 percent of internet users in North America watched television live on broadcast TV channels in the first quarter of 2017.

As of April 2025, streaming was the favorite platform for television and video users in the United States, reaching a 44.3 percent share of the overall viewing time. This marks a growth compared with the previous month. Meanwhile, the market share of cable TV increased to 24.5 percent, benefitting from sports content, such as the NFL Draft and the NBA playoffs.

A 2021 survey showed that 56 percent of the adults in the United States stated they receive TV via cable or satellite. The adults aged between 18 and 29 years old were the group which presented the lowest share (34 percent), while the adults aged 65 years old or more had the highest percentage (81 percent).

According to estimates, there were 125 million TV homes in the United States for the 2023-2024 TV season. Whilst the number of TV households continues to grow, pay TV is becoming less popular – the pay TV penetration rate in the U.S. was pegged at 64 percent in 2023, marking a drop of over 10 percentage points in just five years. The changing TV landscape The trend of consumers (especially younger generations) cutting the cord and instead moving online to streaming services has meant that many pay TV providers have struggled to keep afloat. In spite of this, television statistics show that watching terrestrial TV is still a popular media activity among U.S. consumers. Television has been a popular pastime for so long that it seems impossible the medium could ever die out – but its traditional form is certainly changing. The advent of 3D and smart TV technology, as well as connected TV devices, mean that the ways in which we watch television are changing all the time. User demographics A key factor when considering television consumption in the United States is how a consumer’s age affects their viewing habits and preferences. As of 2022, the average daily time spent watching TV among adults aged 75 years and older amounted to nearly five hours. 20 to 24-year-olds spent just around two hours per day consuming TV content. Moreover, the share of cable TV subscribers was higher among older adults, with half of consumers aged 65 years and older subscribing to a cable TV service, compared to 34 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds at the beginning of 2023.

Data on the share of adults who subscribed to a cable TV service in the United States as of January 2023 showed that adults aged 65 years or above were most likely to be subscribers, with half of them stating that they are currently subscribing to cable TV services. By contrast, respondents between the ages of 35 and 44 were the most likely to have subscribed to cable in the past but then cut the cord later on.

In 2023, the average time spent per individual watching broadcast television in the UK amounted to 158 minutes per day. Despite an initial short spike in viewing time in 2020, likely due to the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic, broadcast TV consumption declined each year since 2010. Older audiences tended to consume traditional TV more than their younger counterparts, with people aged 65 years and over watching TV more than five hours on a daily basis, compared to less than an hour among 16 to-24-year-olds. Internet-connected devices transform the TV market The television continues to be crucial to the UK’s media landscape, regardless of declining TV viewing time. The most recent data showed that the number of TV households in the region increased from 26.7 million in 2017 to more than 27 million in 2021, as smart TVs and connected TVs become the devices of choice. In 2022, the penetration rate of smart TV sets peaked in 2021 and 2022 at 67 percent. Alteration of consumer habits While traditional TV consumption has declined lately, online TV services provided by broadcasters have increased in popularity. The average daily viewing time of broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) in the UK doubled between 2018 and 2022. Additionally, online audiovisual revenues grew by nearly four billion British pounds during the same period, demonstrating the recent shift from linear TV towards online video alternatives.

In 2023, NBC was the leading ad-supported television network in the United States, with an average viewership of 4.54 million, surpassing the viewership number of CBS. The latter recorded 4.51 people watchig the TV channel. Spotlight on CBS

CBS is among the oldest and most popular commercial broadcast television and radio networks in the United States. Founded in 1927, the company now operates as a subsidiary of Paramount, with all of its original programming available on the Paramount+ streaming platform. A closer look at the network's recent performance reveals that it ranked fourth among the leading television networks among U.S. adults in 2023. CBS reported an average of 676 thousand viewers between the ages of 18 to 49 that year and was only outperformed by NBC, Fox, and ABC. So what are audiences watching?

Popular television shows

According to the latest data, NFL Sunday Night Football was the most watched TV program in the United States during the 2022-2023 season. The sports broadcast, which aired on NBC, scored a respective 18.14 million viewers during that period. The three most popular fictional programs to make it into the top five were "Yellowstone", "NCIS," and "FBI" broadcast on Paramount Network and CBS.

In April 2019, a survey revealed that 17 percent of Asian Americans used a broadcast-only TV service. Asians were more likely to use an antenna-only service than adults in any other ethnic group, though 16 percent of Hispanics also received their television service by broadcast and did not use any digital services.

Cable TV news consumption is on the decline. Adults aged between 18 and 34 years old were the least likely to use cable TV networks as a source of news, with a survey held in the United States in August 2022 revealing that 45 percent never did so. Younger consumers preferred social media sites for keeping up to date, and whilst their older peers turned to cable news more frequently, network news was still a more popular daily news source.

Falling cable news ratings

Back in 2017, FOX News, the leading cable news network in the United States, had an average of almost 470 thousand viewers in the primetime demo. With the exception of 2020 where news consumption soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, ratings have fallen consecutively each year, and by 2022, FOX’s average viewer count sank to 341 thousand. CNN and MSNBC saw even greater drops in their audiences, with the latter seeing its ratings fall by more than 2.5 times between 2017 and 2022.

Why the drop in ratings?

Cable and satellite TV is no longer the norm: only adults aged 60 or above express a preference for traditional TV over video streaming services and apps, and among certain age groups the share who preferred the latter was over 70 percent. Indeed, a 2022 survey found that the majority of Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X did not have a cable subscription. The main reason for cutting the cord was price, with over a third of adults saying that cable was simply too expensive.

According to a 2024 survey, the majority of U.S. viewers used a combination of both traditional TV and video streaming services, with 64 percent of respondents subscribing to those platforms. A further one in three people interviewed stated that they only used streaming services, while four percent only viewed content on traditional TV sources, such as pay TV and over-the-air TV.

Data revealed that the number of traditional pay TV households in the United States stood at around 58 million in 2023. This figure will likely drop further over the next few years and amount to less than 41 million by 2028. Meanwhile, digital pay TV is becoming increasingly popular. Pay TV is fighting an uphill battle The United States is one of the largest pay TV markets worldwide based on penetration. But even though millions of viewers frequently tune in to watch their favorite shows, news broadcasts, and sports events on the small screen, the U.S. pay TV industry is facing enormous challenges. More viewers are canceling their cable or satellite subscriptions than ever, be it because of mounting prices, limited content offerings, or the proliferation of over-the-top (OTT) video services and streaming platforms. Based on the latest data, over half of TV households in the country are currently without a telco, cable, or satellite TV provider. Can cable companies combat subscriber loss? The cord-cutting movement and other recent changes in consumer behavior have had a substantial impact on the pay TV landscape and its players. In 2023, U.S. pay TV providers suffered a combined net subscriber loss of around five million viewers. This downward trend also extends to the largest pay TV providers in the U.S., such as Charter and Comcast. However, they have recently ventured into the world of streaming to offset subscriber losses, but whether this expansion will be enough to effectively combat churn remains to be seen.

Data on the global television market showed that there were an estimated 1.72 billion TV households worldwide in 2021. According to the source, this figure will continue to grow and surpass 1.8 billion by 2026.

How are viewers receiving their television content?

A more detailed look at television consumption by platform reveals that free-to-air digital terrestrial TV (FTA DTT) remains the most popular television distribution model worldwide. In addition to that, the latest reports also estimate that the number of IPTV households will exceed digital cable TV households for the first time in 2026. IPTV stands for internet protocol television and describes a new technology that delivers video content via the internet instead of traditional satellite or cable connections.

Spotlight on the United States

The number of TV households in the United States has been growing for decades. And yet, the U.S. pay TV penetration rate keeps dropping every year, mainly due to the ever-increasing accessibility and popularity of online video streaming options. Audiences no longer want to be tied to fixed broadcasting schedules, which is why many viewers are cutting the cord and canceling their pay TV bundles in favor of on-demand video content that can be watched whenever, wherever, and on whichever devices they want.

The leading ad-supported cable network in the United States in 2023 ranked by number of viewers was FOX News, with about 1.9 million of viewers in the presented period. Ranking second and third respectively were ESPN and MSNBC, followed by Hallmark Channel which averaged around 800,000 viewers.

According to a survey from July 2024, the majority of TV streaming viewers in Canada were among adults between 35 and 54 years old, with 35 percent of people interviewed being born between 1970 and 1990. While baby boomers still watch traditional cable TV more than streaming content, Gen Z and millennials opt for online video platforms, such as Netflix or Disney+.

Receiving live TV via over-the-air services remains an important TV source for U.S. consumers. However, while the number of OTA TV households increased between 2017 and 2022, the figure decreased in 2023 to around 18.1 million households.

In 2023, Fox had 994,000 average viewers, making it the leading ad-supported TV network in the United States among adults in the 18 to 49 demographic group. NBC ranked in second, with 931,000 average viewers, followed by ABC with nearly 800,000 average viewers.

Best performing TV networks in the U.S. among total viewers

The extent of NBC’s success in 2023 is even clearer when considering the vast difference between NBC and the networks ranking in third and fourth place among total viewers. Fox had 3.35 million, meaning that NBC had over one million more average viewers than one of its close competitors. Interestingly, although Fox ranked fourth among the leading ad supported U.S. networks, only three of Fox’s shows secured places in the top ten most watched shows of 2023. Top cable news networks in the U.S. TV shows aside, some of the highest performing cable networks are those which specialize in news. This is where Fox tends to excel, regularly pulling in over one million primetime viewers each month. Other cable news networks competing with Fox include MSNBC which tends to rank second, followed by CNN.

A survey conducted in November 2022 found that the share of Americans watching cable television daily is highest among respondents aged 65 and older (47 percent), while this share is lowest within the age group 18 to 34 (18 percent). Meanwhile, the majority in both this age group and in the age group 45 to 64 stated to have never watched cable TV duting the month prior tp the survey (52 percent and 55 percent respectively).

“NFL Sunday Night Football” was the most watched TV show in the United States in the 2023/2024 season, with roughly 19.8 million viewers. “NFL Monday Night Football” ranked second with approximately 12 million viewers. NFL sports broadcasts score high with viewers Football matches and other live sports events have always attracted impressive audiences in the United States, and this popularity also extends to their television broadcasts. In 2023, the Super Bowl LVII was the top primetime telecast in the U.S., drawing nearly 115 million viewers to their screens. Furthermore, none of the 10 most successful primetime programs were not football-related, explaining why 30-second advertising slots during the Super Bowl cost an average of seven million U.S. dollars. Most popular TV networks NBC was the leading ad-supported television network in the United States, with an average viewership of around 4.54 million viewers in 2023. One of its most popular shows during the 2023/2024 season included “Chicago Fire,” a drama that has been on the air for many years. The only other network to surpass four million viewers in 2023 was CBS, which aired “NCIS” as one of its most successful fictional series.

Between the weeks of February 3 and March 9, 2020, the share of total gross quarter hours viewed across major broadcast television channels increased from 25.7 to 30.4 percent when it came to local news broadcasts, reflecting the demand for news and updates about the coronavirus outbreak. Most other program genres also saw an uptick in viewership as citizens were advised to stay at home in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, and with events canceled and entertainment venues closed, watching television is one of the most natural ways to spend that extra time indoors. However, during the given time period adults did not have an appetite for feature films, instead turning to drama, variety, and comedy programming.