Streaming is now the default option for almost half of all TV users in the United States, with traditional broadcast and cable outlets seeing their share of viewing time shrink consistently in the past few years.
As it turns out, though, a significant number of viewers are using their time on streaming services watching shows that begin their lives on broadcast networks. Nearly a third of the long-tail audience for CBS’ Tracker — the top scripted show on network TV in 2024-25 — watched it on a streaming outlet. For ABC’s first-year hit High Potential, the streaming audience was just shy of half its total.
That’s one of the takeaways from the list of top shows in Nielsen’s 35-day, cross-platform ratings for the 2024-25 season — the first time the company has released competitive ratings that measure streaming as well as linear viewing. While streaming shows make up seven of the top 10 non-sports programs, broadast and cable shows account for about half of a larger list of 112 shows that averaged better than 5 million cross-platform viewers.
Speaking of sports: Nielsen doesn’t include live sports telecasts in its 35-day rankings, but just on the strength of seven-day linear numbers, three primetime football showcases make the shows: NBC’s Sunday Night Football (18.9 million viewers, which rises to 21.6 million with streaming on Peacock, per NBCUniversal); ABC and ESPN’s Monday Night Football (15 million); and ABC’s Saturday Night College Football (7.44 million).
The top of the list doesn’t look much different from a ranking of the top 20 cross-platform shows Nielsen released in May; that one covered all episodes that had debuted through mid-March, while the list below covers those that premiered through April 6 (hence some slight discrepancies in the numbers on a few top 20 shows). It also doesn’t include the full seasons of a number of network shows, but the addition of the final handful of episodes likely won’t cause big swings in any show’s tally.
Netflix’s Squid Game remains at No. 1 for the season with 27.14 million viewers over 35 days, while Adolescence (18.96 million) is third overall behind Sunday Night Football. Forty-one programs — 22 on streaming outlets and 19 on broadcast or cable networks — drew better than 10 million viewers.
Among those 19 network and cable shows above the 10 million-viewer mark are a pair of outliers in terms of how they acquired their audiences. Paramount Network’s Yellowstone, which doesn’t have an in-season streaming deal, amassed all 12.07 million viewers on linear TV, including simulcasts and special showings on CBS, CMT and other Paramount cable channels. At the other end, HBO’s The White Lotus drew 89 percent of its 11.59 million viewers through streaming on Max.
Another HBO show had an even more extreme on-air/streaming split. The Penguin, the DC series starring Colin Farrell as the titular Batman villain, averaged 7.95 million viewers over 35 days. Only about 640,000 of those viewers, however, watched on HBO’s cable channel — the other 7.31 million, a whopping 92 percent of the total, streamed the series on Max.
Not including the three sports programs, broadcast series on the chart got about 27 percent of their 35-day audiences via streaming. The percentages ranged from a low of 14.9 for CBS’ Blue Bloods to a high of 55 for ABC’s Abbott Elementary; the latter is the only network show on the list that gets more than half of its viewers via streaming.
A few other notes from the 35-day list:
• Agatha All Along was the most-watched Marvel or Star Wars show on Disney+ in 2024-25 with just over 9 million viewers. The kid-focused Star Wars: Skeleton Crew drew 6.32 million viewers over 35 days despite never charting among Nielsen’s top 10 original series during its run.
• Seven different streamers — Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+, Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+ and Max — had at least one original series with more than 5 million viewers over five weeks. The top performers for each are, respectively, Squid Game (27.14 million viewers), Reacher (17.34 million), Landman (15.8 million, including a couple of linear showings), Agatha All Along (9.01 million), Paradise (8.51 million), Severance (6.83 million) and The Pitt (6.18 million).
• Yellowstone, The White Lotus and The Penguin are the only shows that originated on cable outlets to climb above the 5 million viewer mark.
The list of the season’s top shows (originals only) is below. Use the arrow at the top of the table to see more entries.
