YouTube held its position as the top media company in Nielsen’s April 2025 Media Distributor Gauge report, capturing 12.4% of audiences’ time spent watching television. This marks the platform’s third consecutive month leading the gauge and its highest share of TV viewership to date.
For the first time since Nielsen launched the Media Distributor Gauge in November 2023, company rankings remained unchanged from the previous month. For reference, the Gauge is Nielsen’s monthly snapshot of total broadcast, cable and streaming consumption that occurs through a television screen, providing the industry with a holistic look at what audiences are watching.
Disney once again claimed the second-largest share of television viewership, accounting for 10.7% of total TV time in April. The 0.2 percentage point increase over March was fueled by extensive coverage of major sporting events, including the NFL Draft, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, and the opening round of the NBA Playoffs.
Disney also benefited from the continued success of Grey’s Anatomy, which was April’s most-watched streaming title with 3.9 billion viewing minutes. The long-running drama drew strong numbers across both multichannel and multiplatform outlets.
Meanwhile, Paramount secured 8.9% of total TV watch-time and posted the largest monthly increase among all media companies, gaining 0.4 percentage points. More than half of this growth came from rising viewership at its CBS broadcast affiliates.
NBCUniversal maintained its fourth-place ranking, edging up to an 8.2% share in April from 8.0% in March.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) held steady with a 6.7% share of TV usage, aided by a 58% surge in viewership on TNT. The network aired 18 NBA Playoff games through April 27. Additionally, WBD drew strong streaming numbers thanks to its HBO series The White Lotus, which was the second most-watched streaming title of the month with 3.7 billion viewing minutes on Max. The series also led Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 during the weeks of March 31 to April 6 and April 7 to April 13, with 1.31 billion and 1.25 billion viewing minutes, respectively.
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