These days consumers have no shortage of streaming content options to choose from. But with an abundance of programming available and lack of universal search capabilities that span the many streaming platforms and services where content is splintered across, wading through to find and land on specific programs continues to be a challenge for viewers globally - who now on average spend 14 minutes just trying to find something to watch.
That’s according to new data released in Nielsen-owned Gracenote’s 2025 State of Play report, which highlights that most appear to enjoy their streaming experience, but their TV enjoyment is being negatively impacted by the quantity of choice alongside platform proliferation and fragmentation as well as search and recommendations shortcomings.
In the U.S. specifically, it takes viewers an average of 12 minutes to find something to watch, Gracenote found, up from the 2023 average of 10.5 minutes.
In a positive, 75% of streaming viewers say they enjoy their streaming experiences.
However, in the U.S. 51% of streaming viewers say it’s getting harder to find content they want to watch because there are too many streaming services available, and 53% say the saturation of streaming services and content is overwhelming.
And more broadly, the abundance of streaming services and content options is having a negative impact on the enjoyment of TV viewing for 32% of viewers (increasing to 39% among 18-24-year-olds and 40.5% to those age 25-34 years).
Here are some stats from Gracenote to illustrate the growth in content and platforms that streaming viewers must navigate.
- Individual streaming brands covered in Nielsen’s The Guage have grown to nine, up from five in 2021.
- The five major SVODs included in Gracenote’s Data Hub have collectively grown content catalogs by 17% in 2025.
- There are now more than 1,960 FAST channels, up 21% in 2025.
- Global FAST channels have increased content distribution by 11% in 2025, with sports and news now the top genres across channels, only behind entertainment.
Too much choice without robust recommendations and discovery options is one issue for consumers. But even when viewers know what they want to watch, the fragmented streaming space can pose consumer challenges in terms of finding which service or platform a specific piece of programming is available on.
An area where fragmentation and the challenge for consumers is particularly noticeable is sports, as rights and games make their way to streaming but across multiple platforms and services.
Gracenote’s report called out the NFL as an example to illustrate the fragmentation, where to watch the entire NFL season a viewer would need NFL Sunday Ticket, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, NFL Network and Peacock.
And for some games, while available in multiple places – figuring out where at a given time can present its own challenge.
Gracenote used a September 21 Dodgers versus Giants MLB game as an example, where the event was available on 51 traditional linear TV channels; MLB TV subscriptions; and distributed via five virtual MVPDs (DirecTV Stream, Fubo TV, Hulu, Sling TV and YouTube TV) and Prime Video at the local level.
A few of the findings also demonstrate how this overwhelm and friction for consumers can impact streaming providers – while also shedding light on some potential avenues to pursue as services look to improve the experience.
On the negative impact side, just under 50% of streaming viewers say it’s very likely or somewhat likely that they would cancel a streaming subscription because they can’t find something to watch.
What’s more, consumers often turn on their TV without a specific program in mind – and even with significant time spent browsing, many still can’t find something to watch – causing a notable proportion to tune out altogether.
In the U.S. a quarter of streaming viewers say they always or often abandon their search to find something on TV and do something else instead. That’s an increase from the 20% in 2023 who cited ditching TV sessions after unsuccessful browsing.
Recommendations have room to improve, consumers want cross-service search
Tying into that content discovery issue, Gracenote’s report also shows that streaming platforms have work to do on recommendations and also suggests there’s an opportunity for publishers to use data to create user experiences that can connect viewers to what they want to watch – even if it’s on another service.
Per the report, 88% of U.S. streaming users place a high value of importance on the overall user experience of platform.
That said, 30% of streaming viewers don’t think recommendations are a useful resource for finding content they want to watch.
On the search front, 66% of streaming viewers said they want a service to tell them where to find a specific program, including sports, even if it’s on a different service. The same percentage said they’d prefer a single guide or menu that provides information about all available content across the different sources and services.
As for Gracenote, it emphasized the role of data and large language models (LLMs) as a way to help improve content discovery, recommendations and relevance of responses to user content queries. It’s worth noting this lends itself to Gracenote’s own offerings, where the metadata vendor recently debuted the Gracenote Video Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server – which connected to LLMs that streaming services or recommendations platforms may have to serve as a means to ground LLM responses with datasets and factual, up-to-date content information.
It also speaks to a trend seen on certain CTV platforms, such as Google TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku, which each have recently introduced or disclosed respective AI-powered functionalities – including to enable more conversational voice-based search and discovery.