Tubi Passes Pluto on Nielsen Charts
The inch-by-inch progress of the FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channels onto the Nielsen rankings has been a fascinating one. While Pluto was the first to make it into the rankings, Tubi has also closed the gap- and surpassed Pluto’s record. Our local expert, entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, from Blake & Wang P.A, unpacks this twist in the data.
1 % of TV Use
To slip onto the Gauge snapshot, Tubi managed to net itself 1% of all monitored TV use for February 2023, equal with Peacock. Pluto, the first FAST platform to manage the listing feat, currently sits at 0.7% of TV Use. It’s been maintaining a spot at or around 1% on the Gauge list since September 2022. This makes Tubi the 9th streaming service to break that 1% key threshold to qualify for a direct streaming list, rather than the ambiguous ‘other’ category.
This new entrance came after Nielsen changed its recording methodology for the Gauge, ensuring that the content of broadcast and cable channels which occurs on platforms like Hulu+ and YouTube TV don’t get a double count. Previously, there was no distinction between the viewing of cable and broadcast outlets on what is known as vMVPD services like these vs the direct streaming, cable, or broadcast outlet. This change was live for the February stats, and will remain in place from now on.
Changes with the New System
How does this change affect existing rankings? In both December 2022 and January 2023, we saw the Gauge assign 38.1% of all relevant TV use to streaming platforms, stats which included the vMPVD results. With them removed this month, we see the streamers slip to 32.8% of viewing. This with no shift for cable and broadcast, as the vMVPD viewing was already accounted for for them. The ‘missing’ 5.3% lands in the ‘other viewing’ category, so we can assume it’s mostly reflective of streaming statistics for services that haven’t reached the 1% threshold. Interestingly, despite the hit to YouTube TV, YouTube itself retains the top streaming spot with 7.9% of TV use, with Netflix chasing it at 7.3%. Hulu, Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO Max round out the list.
We’ve also seen overall TV viewing drop by 5%, but that’s likely due to the loss of sports viewing on broadcast as NFL season draws to a close. This shows in the split, with only 1% decline on streaming, 5.7% on cable, and the lion’s share, 9,2%, for broadcast. This will likely remain consistent until the summer sports season starts up.
It’s an interesting shift, and it’s also nice to see Nielsen working harder than ever to refine its data and ensure its accuracy. It’s also interesting to see another FAST channel hopscotch over some of the more popular pay channels to make the list. Tubi has been slowly doing well for Fox, so it will be interesting to see how they develop this unexpected little product this year further.