viewership

Viewership is the number and characteristics of people who watch a particular piece of content, such as a television program, film, live event, or online video. It is a central metric for broadcasters, streaming platforms, advertisers, and content creators, and its measurement varies by medium. In traditional television, viewership is often reported as ratings and audience shares. A rating point typically represents a percentage of a target population, while a share represents the percentage of households or viewers using a television at a given time who are watching the program. In streaming and online video, metrics emphasize unique viewers, watch time, completion rate, retention, and engagement, with metrics often broken down by device, platform, and region.

Measurement systems differ by country and organization. In the United States, Nielsen Media Research provides national and local audience estimates based on a representative panel. In the United Kingdom, BARB provides similar data. Other firms, such as Kantar, comScore, and various platform-native analytics, also contribute. Digital platforms commonly report impressions, view counts, watch time, and average view duration, sometimes alongside demographic breakdowns.

Viewership informs scheduling, licensing, pricing of advertising time, and content strategy. It is also a factor in recommender systems and platform rankings. Limitations include sampling bias, time-shifted viewing, cross-platform fragmentation, and privacy considerations. As audiences increasingly distribute across devices, industry efforts continue to develop unified or total-audience measurements that capture cross-platform viewership.