As the COVID-19 coronavirus has pushed the world to practice social distancing and stay indoors, one medium has seen a substantial surge over last year.
Nielsen has confirmed that, for the week of March 16th, content streaming in the U.S. was up 50% over 2019. The 156 billion total streaming minutes logged that week surpassed the week of February 24th by around 36%, which lines up quite well with the first big push for social distancing as the pandemic began to spread more rapidly in America.
23% of all streaming in American households took place on a television in the week of March 16th, Nielsen states, beating out last year’s 14%.
Unsurprisingly, Netflix snagged the lion’s share of the streaming with 29% of all content being viewed on their platform. YouTube was a relatively close second at 20%, followed by Hulu and Amazon at 10% and 9%, respectively. Meanwhile, Nielsen labels all additional streaming services as “other,” such as CBS All Access and the Mouse House’s new and rapidly growing service Disney+. This category raked in 31% of content streaming collectively.
Equally unsurprising, everyone’s favorite workplace comedy The Office ranked highest in viewed shows on Netflix because it may be physically impossible for our society to ever grow tired of the antics at Dunder Mifflin. However, Mark Wahlberg’s Spenser Confidential was the most viewed content overall.
Wondering what you’re going to watch while you and your family isolate yourselves from the outside world during this ongoing pandemic? Don’t worry – you can click here to check out the full list of everything dropping on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ in April.
Stay safe and keep on following social distancing guidelines as we wait out the outbreak, and stay tuned here for more as it all continues to unfold.
