Inside America’s Viewing Habits: Streaming Megahits and the Enduring Grip of Broadcast TV.

This year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was more than a celebration of balloons and marching bands; it doubled as a live billboard for the characters and franchises now shaping American entertainment. As Netflix rolled out floats inspired by K-Pop Demon Hunters and Stranger Things, while Cynthia Erivo opened the event in midtown Manhattan.

The fictional K-pop girl group from K-Pop Demon Hunters made its daytime television debut with “Golden,” the breakout single that has spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The parade cameo could have passed off as a marketing moment, but was a signal that Americans are increasingly willing to treat on-screen characters as mascots in their own right. 
Despite being an animated film released into an oversaturated streaming market, K-Pop Demon Hunters became one of 2025’s biggest cross-demographic hits. Its cultural fluency and soundtrack helped push it into Netflix’s Top Ten in more than 90 countries. Three songs from the film’s album have reached the Billboard Hot 100’s Top Ten, and “Golden” is currently the most-streamed song in the U.S. The lesson is that Netflix knows exactly how to turn global trends, in this case, K-pop, into content that travels everywhere. 
The appetite for high-energy, emotionally punchy entertainment seems to alight with a broader trend. Statista Consumer Insights finds that 59% of U.S. adults prefer action and adventure films, followed by comedy (58%) and drama (48%). 

Two of this year’s parade headliners K-Pop Demon Hunters and Stranger Things come from Netflix, whose largest market remains North America. The U.S. alone has 81.44 million subscribers, with the company generating $39 billion in revenue in 2024 (up 15.7% YoY) and $11.51 billion in Q3 2025, (up 17% YoY). 
It’s an impressive trajectory for a company critics dismissed in 2007. Today’s $250-billion-plus valuation reflects more than technological dominance. Netflix’s success has come from its granular understanding of audience behavior, of what people watch, when they watch, and what makes them stay. As broadband speeds rose and attention spans shrank, the platform recognized before anyone else that viewers no longer wanted to wait for entertainment. They wanted to stream it immediately.

According to Netflix’s internal viewership metrics , Wednesday (Season 1 – 2022) remains its most-watched series, with 1.7188 billion hours viewed and 252 million individual views. Stranger Things (Season 4 – 2022) follows closely with 1.838 billion hours, and 2025’s breakout Adolescence logged 546.5 million hours. But the story doesn’t just end with streaming. 
Broadcast television continues to deliver quietly powerful numbers. As per Nielsen’s list, CBS claimed six spots in the list of the 20 most-watched series  including “Tracker,” surpassed only by Netflix’s Squid Game and Adolescence. Other CBS titles like Matlock, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, Ghosts, Elsbeth, and Watson held top 20 positions as well, counting viewership across live CBS, DVR, network apps, and Paramount+. ABC was the only other broadcast network to break into the top 20, with two series placing. 
Other long-running franchises still haven’t loosened their grip. Shows like NCIS, Law & Order: SVU, and Grey’s Anatomy, all born in the era when Netflix was still shipping DVDs; continue to command loyal, multigenerational audiences. 
Even in a streaming-first world, America still has room for both the new fictional idols of Netflix and the dependable comfort TV of broadcast giants.