Disney Regains TV Distributor Crown as Football Lifts Several Media Giants

The start of football season was a boon to several media companies in September — including Disney, which once again claimed the No. 1 spot in Nielsen‘s rankings of TV distributors.

Disney outlets accounted for 11.3 percent of all TV use in the United States for Nielsen’s September measurement period (which ran from Aug. 26-Sept. 29). That’s up from 9.5 percent in August and marks the company’s ninth time in the top spot in the 11 months Nielsen has shared distributor data.

Huge gains for ESPN and ESPN2 — both of which more than doubled their share of TV viewing from August, thanks to the start of the college football and NFL seasons — and a 25 percent bump from ABC drove Disney’s gains. Other NFL and college football media partners also grew month to month: Paramount (8.2 percent of TV use) and Fox (7.3 percent) each adding more than a point to their August totals and Amazon (3.7 percent) rising by half a point.

NBCUniversal, which led August’s rankings thanks to the Summer Olympics, dropped back to third place with 9.3 percent of TV use, in line with its non-Olympic month average. YouTube held steady in second place with 10.6 percent of TV use. The 14 companies listed in the distributor rankings collectively had about 73 percent of all TV use in the U.S. for September, similar to previous months.

Nielsen’s TV distributor rankings for September are below.