YouTube Shorts watch time on TVs hits 2 billion hours monthly

Short-form video was originally conceived for mobile devices, with vertical framing tailored to fit a smartphone screen. Yet, according to YouTube, this format has found an unexpected and growing audience on the biggest screen in the house. It may seem counterintuitive, but the numbers speak for themselves: viewers now spend over 2 billion hours each month watching YouTube Shorts , the platform’s clips, which run up to three minutes , on televisions.

“The living room is YouTube’s fastest-growing screen, and the Shorts experience is further helping connect viewers with the world’s most active creator community from the comfort of their couch,” said Kurt Wilms, YouTube’s senior director of product management for YouTube on TV. “We’ve found that audiences increasingly want to watch their favorite content on the biggest screen at home, whether it’s long-form content, a podcast, or a Short.”

This shift is part of a broader push by YouTube to capture living room viewership. In the U. S. alone, people watch over 200 million hours of YouTube content daily on television sets. YouTube now integrates Shorts into search results for users watching on TV, meaning viewers may stumble upon a minute-long clip even if they didn’t intend to browse short-form content. Google TV, a platform from YouTube’s parent company Alphabet, recently introduced a “Short videos for you” row on its feed, designed to further drive engagement.

Given the extra screen real estate when a vertical video is displayed on a television, YouTube has redesigned the viewing experience to show comments alongside the video, making it easier to interact without leaving the full-screen view.

“By tailoring Shorts for the big screen, we unlocked a more immersive way for fans to engage with their favorite content while also creating a massive new stage for creators to reach global audiences and scale their businesses,” said Sarah Ali, VP of product management for YouTube Shorts, in a press release.

This trend extends beyond traditional short-form video into podcast viewership, even though podcasts are typically an audio-first medium. Streaming companies are betting that podcasts will evolve into the new daytime talk show , something people can watch but also follow while multitasking in another room.

According to YouTube, viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts each month on living room devices in 2025, up sharply from 400 million per month in 2024. Netflix has also invested heavily in video podcasts, signing exclusive deals with iHeartMedia, Barstool Sports, Spotify, and other studios to secure video rights to popular shows.