The Media Distributor Gauge is a monthly Nielsen report that ranks media companies by their share of all television viewing in the United States. It adds up every minute watched on a TV set across a company's broadcast networks, cable channels and streaming services, then expresses that total as a percentage of overall TV usage. The report exists because the older platform view, which divides viewing into broadcast, cable and streaming, could not show how much of the audience a single owner commands once its programming is spread across all three.

Nielsen launched it on May 14, 2024, alongside the April 2024 edition of The Gauge, its platform-level snapshot. Karthik Rao, chief executive of Nielsen, called it "the first convergent TV comparison of its kind". The two reports now appear as a pair each month. As of September 2026, the latest edition covers July 2026.

How the ranking is built

The calculation runs in three stages, according to Nielsen. First, total minutes viewed on the television screen are measured for each national network and streaming service. Second, every one of those entities is assigned to its parent company, a step Nielsen describes as distributor mapping. ABC, ESPN, Hulu and Disney+ sit under Disney. Fox News Channel, the FOX affiliates and Tubi sit under FOX. Third, minutes are summed for each parent and divided by total TV usage for the month.

A parent company needs at least a 1.0% share of television to be reported. Fourteen cleared that bar in the first edition, led by Disney at 11.5%, with 42% of its share coming from Disney+ and Hulu. Each company appears as a stacked bar that separates linear from streaming contributions, and much of the analytical value sits there. In that first chart, Peacock supplied only 1.3 points of NBCUniversal's total, according to informitv.

Mapping is revised over time. The May 2024 edition added NBA TV and Hogar de HGTV to Warner Bros. Discovery and assigned Twitch to Amazon, lifting each company by 0.1 share point that month. Commercial arrangements can also override corporate structure. Comcast completed the Versant separation on January 2, 2026, yet Nielsen still reports NBCU and Versant as one combined line, showing each component inside it, because NBCUniversal continues to sell Versant's advertising.

Inputs follow The Gauge methodology. Nielsen's published FAQ describes two separately weighted panels: streaming data comes from a subset of National TV panel homes fitted with Streaming Meters, while broadcast, cable and total usage are drawn from the full TV panel. Figures cover total day for persons aged two and over. Linear viewing uses Live+7, which counts live viewing plus playback within seven days. Months follow the broadcast calendar, with weeks beginning on a Monday, so an interval lasts four or five weeks. The July 2026 interval ran from June 29 to July 26, 2026.

What counts, and what does not

Three rules shape the numbers more than the headline rankings suggest. Only viewing on a television set is included, so phones, tablets and desktops fall outside scope. Subscription and ad-supported viewing are counted together. And since the February 2023 interval, live programming watched through a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) such as YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV has been credited to the network that aired it rather than to the app. An ESPN game streamed through YouTube TV therefore adds to Disney's total. The YouTube line in the ranking reflects YouTube Main only.

The Gauge also carries an "other" category covering unmeasured tuning, gaming, audio streaming and unidentified video on demand. From June 2023, Nielsen began using its Streaming Content Ratings service to move platform-original titles watched through cable set-top boxes out of that bucket and into streaming, crediting the platform that distributed them.

Origin and evolution

The Gauge predates its companion by roughly three years; its first edition covered May 2021. When Nielsen launched the distributor view, it published history back to November 2023, the month from which tracking began. YouTube started that series at 7.9%.

Disney led through most of 2024. In June that year, Netflix jumped from sixth to fourth while YouTube reached 9.9% and Disney held 10.8%. By November, Disney still led at 11.1% with YouTube 0.3 points behind. The order changed in February 2025, when YouTube took 11.6% against Disney's 10.0%. Nielsen called that YouTube's second time at the top since tracking began, while MediaPost reported it as the first. The two accounts have not been reconciled publicly.

YouTube stayed in front throughout 2025. In June, Netflix broke into the top three for the first time at 8.3%, with YouTube at 12.8%. By November, YouTube held 12.9% and Paramount had climbed to third at 8.9%. That coverage cautioned that Nielsen's move to Big Data + Panel for the 2025 season complicates year-on-year comparisons.

Why the ranking matters

The report has become shorthand for scale and bargaining power. When Fox agreed to buy Roku for about $22 billion, its investor presentation used March 2026 Gauge data to place the combined company third at 10.2%, behind YouTube at 13.2% and Disney at 10.5%. YouTube has drawn on Gauge figures to position itself as a television platform, a framing that supports its claim on television budgets, and Netflix has cited its Gauge share to investors since 2022.

For buyers, the attraction is a single figure for a seller's footprint across delivery routes, which matters in upfront negotiations where one parent packages linear and streaming inventory together. Coverage of the May 2026 edition added a caution: ranking by minutes is not ranking by advertising revenue. Netflix held 8.0% of watch-time while tracking toward roughly $3 billion of 2026 advertising revenue, and a share of viewing includes minutes from tiers that carry no advertising at all.

Limitations and disputes

Every recent release states that The Gauge and the Media Distributor Gauge do not reflect Nielsen's currency ratings. That caveat became the centre of a dispute in 2026. Nielsen had brought universe estimates from the Advertising Research Foundation's DASH survey, run with NORC at the University of Chicago, into its currency at the end of January and intended to carry them into the February reports. When some clients requested more data, the platform report was pushed back a week to match the distributor report, then scheduled for March 24. On March 19, the Wall Street Journal reported unreleased figures showing linear TV at 47.4% and streaming at 41.9%. A day later, chief client officer Peter Naylor told clients that both reports would come out in April under January's methodology to "minimize trend breaks", according to Deadline, with changes deferred to the autumn.

Sean Cunningham, president and chief executive of the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), accused Nielsen of suppressing the data on March 26. Netflix co-chief executive Greg Peters countered on April 16 that the change would alter Nielsen's figures rather than viewing behaviour. The February reports finally appeared on April 14, 2026, with NBCU and Versant, lifted by the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, displacing YouTube from first place, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Media Rating Council (MRC) had separately questioned irregular audience estimates in the currency product, according to TheDesk.

Structural objections persist. YouTube's total blends creator uploads with professional content, and informitv noted at launch that the platform does not produce its own programming, so ranking it beside studios reflects a particular definition of "distributor". Spin-offs and mergers create trend breaks. Nielsen adjusted its measurement parameters for Tubi in June 2026 and says it is still evaluating the impact. In October 2024, about a quarter of Hulu viewing was wrongly attributed to Disney+ in The Gauge, though Nielsen said distributor figures were unaffected. Publication has also slowed: the June 2025 Gauge appeared on July 15, 2025, while the July 2026 edition arrived on September 10, 2026.

Not the same as

The Gauge divides the same total by platform category and by individual streaming service. The distributor report re-cuts that total by owner.

The Ad Supported Gauge is quarterly and limited to advertising-funded viewing; its second-quarter 2026 edition put that share of US viewing at 71.5%.

Currency ratings are the Big Data + Panel figures on which advertising is bought and sold. As the PPC Land currency explainer sets out, the Gauge is widely cited but never used for settlement.

The Gauge Poland shares the brand but runs on a separate panel of 3,500 households and reports platform shares, with YouTube at 2.5% in July 2026, rather than a distributor ranking.

Recent developments

The July 2026 edition, published on September 10, recorded YouTube at a record 14.2%, extending its lead to 5.0 points. World Cup coverage and Peacock's Love Island USA pushed NBCU-Versant to second at 9.2%, while FOX posted the largest viewing increase among distributors for a second consecutive month and reached 7.8%. Streaming rose to 49.0% of television.

A month earlier, FOX gained 0.9 points to 7.4% on more than 84 billion World Cup minutes, with Disney second at 9.6%. In May, the combined NBCU and Versant line stood at 8.4%, split 6.2% and 2.2%. Nielsen's seven currency changes took effect on August 31, 2026, after being scheduled in July. Nielsen says methodology updates to both Gauge reports will follow this autumn. Whether they reproduce the shifts seen in the withheld February figures is not yet known.

Timeline

  • May 2021 - The Gauge publishes its first edition, covering US viewing by platform
  • February 2023 - Nielsen credits linear viewing through vMVPD and MVPD apps to broadcast and cable rather than streaming
  • June 2023 - Streaming Content Ratings used to reclassify platform-original content viewed through cable set-top boxes
  • November 2023 - Start of the distributor tracking series; YouTube at 7.9%
  • May 14, 2024 - Nielsen launches the Media Distributor Gauge with April 2024 data; 14 companies above the 1.0% threshold, Disney first at 11.5%
  • June 25, 2024 - May 2024 edition adds NBA TV, Hogar de HGTV and Twitch to the mapping
  • March 25, 2025 - February 2025 edition places YouTube first at 11.6%, Disney at 10.0%
  • July 22, 2025 - June 2025 edition puts Netflix in the top three for the first time
  • January 2, 2026 - Comcast completes the Versant separation
  • End of January 2026 - Nielsen implements ARF DASH universe estimates in its currency
  • March 20, 2026 - Nielsen defers Gauge methodology changes to the autumn and delays February reports to April
  • March 26, 2026 - VAB accuses Nielsen of suppressing February data
  • April 14, 2026 - February 2026 editions released; NBCU and Versant displace YouTube
  • June 15, 2026 - Fox agrees to acquire Roku, citing March 2026 Gauge shares
  • July 28, 2026 - May 2026 edition published; YouTube at 13.8%
  • August 18, 2026 - June 2026 edition published; FOX at 7.4%
  • August 31, 2026 - Seven Nielsen currency changes take effect
  • September 10, 2026 - July 2026 edition published; YouTube at a record 14.2%, NBCU-Versant second at 9.2%

Summary

Who. Nielsen produces the report. The companies ranked include YouTube, Disney, NBCU and Versant, Netflix, Paramount, FOX, Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon, The Roku Channel, Scripps, Weigel, A+E, Hallmark and AMC Networks. Media owners, investors, agencies and advertisers use it as a reference point.

What. A monthly ranking of parent companies by share of total US television viewing, built by mapping every national network and streaming service to its owner, with a 1.0% reporting threshold. It covers ad-supported and subscription viewing on TV sets and is not a trading currency.

When. Launched on May 14, 2024 with April 2024 data and history back to November 2023. YouTube took first place from Disney with February 2025 data. The February 2026 edition was delayed to April 14, 2026 amid a methodology dispute, and the latest edition, for July 2026, appeared on September 10, 2026.

Where. The United States, covering viewing on television screens only, published on Nielsen's Gauge data centre alongside The Gauge.

Why. Programming now reaches audiences through broadcast, cable and streaming at once, so platform shares alone understate or scatter an owner's reach. The ranking gives one comparable figure per company, which is why it now appears in upfront positioning, merger materials and disputes over how television budgets are divided.