Thanks to the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal — with an assist from the recently spun off Versant — dethroned YouTube for the largest share of TV viewing in February.
Nielsen released both its monthly Gauge summary of viewing by platform and its Media Distributor Gauge for the reach of TV use by company on Tuesday. The stats were held back for several weeks due to some Nielsen clients pushing back on a change in how the ratings provider assembled its Gauge data.
Briefly: Nielsen was planning to supplement its data with that from a group called the Advertising Research Foundation that would likely have shown a dip in streaming’s share of total TV use. A number of clients balked at that idea, and in late March, Nielsen decided both to hold back on releasing the monthly numbers and not make any changes to its current Gauge methodology until the 2026-27…
