Demos: CBS And BET Lead Linear TV Viewing, Netlfix and YouTube Dominate Streaming
Broadcast: After the past several months of NBC leading broadcast viewership, March’s top spot went to CBS with 136.8 million viewers. ABC followed with 109.8 million viewers, then NBC with 79.5 million viewers, FOX with 66.2 million viewers and, finally, The CW with 14.3 million viewers. Every network experienced spikes on specific days in March. These spikes only change the positioning of CBS and ABC, swapping their first and second ranking positions.
ABC experienced a spike of 17.0 million viewers on March 15, likely linked with the Oscars. CBS had a spike every Sunday alongside March 26 and March 27, totaling 54.0 million viewers across the seven dates. This means that over a third of all of March’s viewership on CBS can be attributed to these seven days. It is unclear what specifically caused these spikes but it could be related to March Madness programming. The CW had a small increase on March 7 with 1.1 million viewers, potentially correlated with the College Basketball Season Finale, and FOX had a spike on March 17 of 9.9 million viewers, potentially linked to the 2026 World Baseball Classic championship game. NBC had a spike on the first three Wednesdays of the month, totaling 16.7 million viewers. It is not apparent as to what caused these increases, but it could be due to the One Chicago crossover event on March 4 and the following two weeks of new Chicago series episodes following a month break for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Cable: BET topped the cable networks in March with 1.1 million viewers, nearly doubling that of the second rank, Magnolia Network (709,000 viewers). OWN (606,000 viewers) and The Weather Channel (438,000 viewers) followed. Then BET Her with 110,000 viewers, Justice Central with 85,000, CleoTV with 65,000 and Comedy.TV with 55,000. The only networks to change ranking from February to March are OWN and The Weather Channel swapping third and fourth places. Despite there being more information available for March than February, average data suggests that nearly every network increased their weekly viewership with only BET Her and Justice Central decreasing by marginal amounts (1,000 viewers or less).
Spanish Language: TUDN carried over its first place ranking from February into March with 660,000 viewers. TUDN was followed by Fox Deportes (498,000 viewers), Universo (336,000 viewers), Galavisión (197,000 viewers) and Discovery Español (125,000 viewers). Pulling up the latter end of the rankings are CNN Español with 80,000 viewers, ESPN Deportes with 68,000 viewers, Nat Geo Mundo with 60,000 viewers and Discovery Familia with 50,000 viewers. BeIN Sports Español and GalaNovelas were excluded from rankings due to inconsistent data. According to averages across the data, three networks decreased in average weekly viewership: TUDN, Universo and ESPN Deportes. All other networks increased in weekly average viewership as compared to February.
Streaming Viewership by Percentage
Streaming: Note that this section walks through February’s data due to delays in the release of Nielsen’s The Gauge. Streaming accounted for 48.0% of TV viewership in February. YouTube maintained the top spot in streaming with 26.5% of the streaming viewership. Netflix (17.5%), Disney+ (10.4%) and Prime Video (8.1%) followed. With some changes in the ranking order from January, subsequent platforms in percentage were Peacock (6.3%), Roku (6.0%), Tubi (4.6%), Paramount+ (4.4%) and Warner Bros. Discovery (2.7%), with the remaining share being split among other platforms. Peacock had the largest percentage change with a +2.5% increase and is among two platforms that saw a positive change. This is potentially due to Peacock’s coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The other positive change was Tubi with a +0.1% increase. The second biggest change was Netflix with a -1.2% decrease in share. Prime Video (-0.6%), Paramount+ (-0.5%), Roku (-0.4%), Warner Bros Discovery (-0.3%) and YouTube (-0.1%) also declined slightly. Disney+ was the only platform to see no change in share.
