Disney Slips Significantly Year-to-Year in Original Content and Streaming Viewership Market Share

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Disney is losing viewers, and this could be a major issue for the company.

Recent Nielsen data shows that Disney’s overall TV viewership in the U.S. has decreased over the past year. A closer look reveals this is happening as Disney relies more on sports and older shows, while popular new original content is increasingly attracting viewers to other networks.

Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge measures how people spend their time watching content across all platforms – traditional broadcast and cable, as well as streaming services. It provides a comprehensive view of total “TV usage” by distributor, going beyond just streaming numbers or social media trends. This makes it a valuable tool for tracking which distributors are capturing the most viewing time each month – essentially, a ‘share of attention’ scoreboard.

Despite growth for Disney, YouTube was the most-watched platform on TV in December, according to Nielsen’s latest report. You can find the full data here:

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 27, 2026

The year-over-year share move: Disney down, not up!

I’ve been following the media landscape closely, and it’s fascinating to see how Disney performs. In December 2024, they were actually number one, capturing a really impressive 11.2% of all TV viewing! But a year later, in December 2025, they slipped to number two with 10.7%. That’s a small drop of 0.5%, and it’s worth noting this happens during a peak month for TV watching. What really strikes me is that Disney also benefits hugely from sports coverage on ESPN and ABC, which naturally boosts their overall viewership. So, even if sports viewing was up in December (which it was!), it’s possible Disney’s regular shows were actually getting less attention than the numbers suggest. It makes you wonder what their performance would look like without that sports boost!

Keep in mind that Nielsen’s December ratings period aligns with the television broadcast calendar, running from late November to late December. This is important because during this time, a large amount of holiday programming and popular sports events can overshadow newer, original content simply due to the sheer volume of airtime they occupy.

What Disney’s viewing growth is actually coming from:

Disney’s performance improved from November to December 2025 primarily due to strong viewership of ESPN’s football coverage and popular holiday movies on Freeform. This isn’t seen as a negative, but rather a reflection of how the business operates – live sports and classic holiday content consistently attract viewers.

This highlights the main problem with your question: even though sports and holiday programming are performing well, if Disney’s overall viewership is still declining, then newly created shows and movies aren’t currently driving growth in how much TV attention Disney receives.

Nielsen’s 2025 ARTEY Awards, which measure success by total minutes viewed on streaming platforms, confirm a similar trend. “Bluey” on Disney+ was the most-watched streaming title overall in 2025, also winning the award for top acquired program. “Stranger Things” on Netflix was named the top original program of the year.

This is a clear indicator of a key difference between the streaming services. While Disney+ certainly has popular original shows and movies, Nielsen’s data shows that its most-watched content is actually from shows and movies it acquired – content not originally made for Disney+. Meanwhile, Netflix is successfully establishing itself as the leader in original content with huge, globally popular franchises.

Look, Disney is really struggling, and it’s becoming clear that even popular shows aren’t enough to fix things. Bluey was a massive hit, but it couldn’t turn the tide, and surprisingly, the King of the Hill reboot is doing really well on streaming. Still, even that isn’t enough to counteract the overall trend of viewers switching off from what Disney is offering. It’s a tough situation, and it feels like there’s a deeper problem than just a lack of good content.

If we use the standard industry definition of “original content”—meaning brand new shows and series you can only watch on one platform—then Disney’s recent decrease in market share points to three things happening at the same time:

  1. Disney’s programming is relying more and more on sports events and its existing library of content. While these are popular, they aren’t as effective at attracting new viewers as completely original shows and movies.

  2. Our competitors are benefiting from the popularity and viewership of their original shows, as demonstrated by Nielsen consistently ranking Netflix’s originals as the most-watched.

  3. More people are watching TV through streaming services than ever before, making it crucial for shows to appeal to a wide audience. Even a small drop in viewership can signal that Disney isn’t gaining market share with its original content as quickly as its competitors.

Okay, so everyone’s talking about Disney, and I’ve been looking at the Nielsen data. It’s not that Disney’s original shows are failing, exactly. What the data actually shows is that, compared to last year, people are watching a little less Disney overall. It seems like Disney is still doing well because of live sports and their holiday specials, but when it comes to the biggest, most-watched original shows of the year, Disney didn’t actually top the charts this time around.

According to Nielsen’s October ratings, streaming accounted for 45.7% of total TV viewing in the US.

— Jorge Vitali (@jorvitali) December 9, 2025

Disney is facing a significant challenge in the streaming market. When you combine the viewership of Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus, they only hold about 4.8% of the market share. If each service was measured individually, Roku and Tubi are now likely more popular than Disney Plus alone. Disney’s leadership probably doesn’t want people to realize this.

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2026-01-29 19:02