YouTube Has a Firm Grip on Daytime TV
YouTube’s big streaming lead over Netflix and other competitors stems in large part to its dominance during daylight hours.
At Nancy Ann Ling’s house in Central Texas, the TV generally goes on around 5 a.m., and Mrs. Ling flips over to the same app each day: YouTube. For many hours after that, the app keeps running.
As she prepares breakfast, Mrs. Ling and her husband stream the previous night’s monologue from Stephen Colbert or Seth Meyers. After her husband heads off to work, she finds comforting background noise for meditating. By the afternoon, she tunes into cycling videos as she exercises, and later turns to the YouTube channels of local news outlets while she cooks.
But when the sun goes down, YouTube goes off. Mrs. Ling, 57, scrolls to an app like Apple TV or BritBox for scripted entertainment.
And Mrs. Ling’s viewing habits mirror those of millions of Americans.
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