Leading TV markets in the United States 2023, by number of viewers

New York was the largest TV market in the United States, with 20.4 million viewers from September 2022 to January 2023. The only other market to exceed the 10-million-viewer mark that year was Los Angeles at around 17 million.

TV households in the U.S.

The number of TV households in the U.S. continues to grow at a steady pace. According to the latest estimates, there were 123.8 million TV households in the country during the 2022-2023 broadcast season, up from an estimated 102 million at the turn of the century. But while this figure continues to rise, there is also no denying that pay TV is becoming less popular each year. The U.S. pay TV industry is facing an uphill battle due to the proliferation of over-the-top video services and streaming platforms. As a case in point, the number of pay TV households in the U.S. has dropped from 101 million in 2013 to roughly 65.1 million in 2022.

Television consumption habits

Despite a temporary uptick in television consumption amid the pandemic, viewers in the U.S. have been spending less time in front of the TV in recent years. Reports indicated that the daily television viewing time declined by 12 minutes between 2019 and 2022, now standing at around three hours. But not all age groups have abandoned the silver screen equally as rapidly. Zooming in on television consumption by age group, one can find that adults aged 65 and above have extended viewing durations for several years and now spend more than twice the amount of time with the medium as viewers aged 44 or below.