On 22 October, podcast expert Callum McDonnell shared an image showing shares of television viewing time, circled YouTube at the top in red and added: "YouTube seems unstoppable right now. Incredible chart." The image does not name its data source, and the lines match US Nielsen data. YouTube, however, does not even have a figure of its own in the published data of the Czech Association of Television Organisations (ATO), which commissions Czech TV audience measurement. Nielsen credited YouTube with a record 14.2% of US TV time in July 2026, and streaming overall with 49.0%.
YouTube has a smaller share of TV viewing in Poland than in the US
Nielsen splits TV time using the same metric in Poland, an EU country, where in September this year YouTube accounted for 2.3% and streaming overall for 10.4%. YouTube remained first among streaming services there. The Polish panel also counts TV stations' live broadcasts watched through apps as streaming.
YouTube also holds first place in the US ranking of companies that distribute TV content. Streaming as a whole, though, gets a very different share of screen time in the two countries. Below the chart, McDonnell, founder of the agency 7xContent, lists eight reasons for YouTube's success, among them that the gatekeepers lost their monopoly. In the comments he added: "There is limited feedback in TV. They make a whole series and can't change anything. On YouTube you can optimise episode after episode."
According to McDonnell, creators have the data on click-through rate, watch time, retention and shares that TV producers have no idea about, and can use it to optimise episode after episode. Creative lead Subhrajyoti Biswas asked under the post: "Curious though, do you think creators now over-optimise for that data?" He had watched a few channels get so retention-obsessed that their personalities slowly flattened out. McDonnell agreed with him that you should not optimise at the expense of taste, personality and authenticity. In his comment, Biswas also pointed out that TV had ratings, but never a graph showing the exact second people walked away.
Czech TV data put YouTube in the same category as games and Netflix
In its published viewing data, ATO counts the time viewers over 15 spend at the TV set on things other than broadcast in a category of other activities. YouTube appears there in brackets. It is merely an example of online video platforms, alongside paid services such as Netflix, listening to music and podcasts, mirroring content from a phone, and games. In 2025 the whole category averaged 37 minutes a day, or 15% of time at the TV set. On the US chart YouTube has its own line; in the Czech TV data it fits into a bracket.
"Television broadcasting thus remains the main way the TV set is used," Michaela Suráková, head of Atmedia, which represents themed TV channels on the Czech market, said of the data. Yet in the same year viewers aged 25 to 34 devoted 40% of their time at the TV set to activities other than broadcast, and viewers aged 55 and over, 8%. Even for younger viewers, the published ATO data do not distinguish how much of this goes to YouTube and how much to games or podcasts.
Admosphere, until this August Nielsen Admosphere, supplies ATO's data. At that point the association bought it from its Dutch owner and renamed it. The Nielsen group, whose data lie behind both the US and the Polish YouTube figures, is leaving the Czech market. The cross-platform audience measurement project continues unchanged.
Asked in an interview about younger viewers and online video, ATO managing director Michal Jordan replied that investment must go into measuring online video content and advertising. "Some of this should already be in place in 2028," he added. For now, he said, there is no way to do without the TV panel, and ATO expects that "there will continue to be two panels".
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