New data shows significant drop in search time
Yet Gracenote contests that search isn’t getting easier
Vested interests underpin metadata company’s report
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A rare achievement in the streaming industry has made its way onto the Faultline news desk. According to new data from Gracenote, the average time spent searching for something to watch has fallen by a whole two minutes.
Yet the reluctance of the Nielsen-owned company to spotlight the reversal of a teeth-gnashing trend is telling.
In an era of ubiquitous content access and burgeoning archives, search and discovery woes are among the most regurgitated of all complaints from viewers combing through rails for something to watch.
This time last year, Gracenote’s State of Play report put the global average search time at 14 minutes. Its 2026 figures show that has now fallen to 12 minutes – a 14% improvement in the time it takes consumers to find something to watch. This is hardly a revolution, but is certainly a welcome development in an industry that has been working painstakingly for years to solve the discovery problem.
So, at last, some tangible progress to cling onto in the bid to provide the perfect content recommendation, or so we thought.
Gracenote counters that less time spent searching for something to watch does not, by itself, mean viewers are finding content more easily.
Gracenote’s Head of Content and Thought Leadership, William Quinn, told Faultline, “In this report, 25% of respondents in France say they frequently start without a specific program in mind, look for something to watch, cannot find anything of interest and do something else instead. This was up from 22% in 2025. We believe that the increase in search abandonment provides important context for the shorter average search time.”
In other words, Quinn is saying that the average search time has fallen partly because more people are giving up before finding anything. This turns the original argument about improved search times on its head, if viewers are abandoning the process sooner.
That potentially calls for separate measurements – those who search to completion, and those who jump ship. That could make for fun reading in Gracenote’s 2027 report.
To that point, some 47% of respondents in the 2026 survey said they spend longer searching for something to watch than they did a year ago – despite the measured global average moving in the opposite direction. This curious contradiction suggests recency bias played a factor in why survey respondents’ views clash with the objective evidence.
The most surprising takeaway from Gracenote’s 2025 report was France, where consumers reported spending a record-high average of 26 minutes searching for content, compared to 11 minutes across the other five countries. That anomaly has evidently influenced Gracenote’s decision not to publish country-level search times in its 2026 report.
We would all like to know whether France has finally found something to watch.
To that end, Quinn revealed, “Note that in 2026, average search times were more closely aligned across the six countries surveyed, ranging from about 11 to 13 minutes. (Given the tightness of the data points, we decided not to chart them in the final report.) France averaged about 13 minutes, compared with the 12 minutes overall we called out.”
It must be said that Gracenote has a vested interest in highlighting the difficulties of search and discovery. After all, its metadata underpins much of the world’s recommendation engines and content discovery tools. Even so, it would be remiss not to celebrate a measurable improvement.
Streamers should be using this data as ammunition, even if it is partly based on increased abandonments (we only know that because we asked). Though Gracenote attests that content discovery is getting harder, the higher abandonments example is exclusive to France, and does not speak to search time improvements least across the other five countries covered by the survey – the US, UK, Germany, Brazil, and Mexico.
Drilling deeper into discovery habits, women aged 18 to 24 spend longer searching for something to watch than any other demographic, according to Gracenote.
The gender search gap is hardly a gulf, as women spend an average of 12 minutes deciding what to watch, compared with 11 minutes for men. Age, however, is where things get interesting.
There is a steady correlation between age and time spent searching, with younger generations taking longer to settle on something. The 18-to-24 demographic tops the chart at 15 minutes spent searching for something to watch, with the average gradually declining through successive age groups to just 9 minutes among those aged 65 and over.
This suggests that the industry has a particular discovery problem among younger viewers, precisely the demographic streaming platforms are so desperate to retain.
Live sports—willing to pay, struggling to find:
The search problem becomes more acute when it comes to sports, where years of distribution fragmentation have created a messy viewing experience. Gracenote finds that nearly 52% of streaming viewers frequently don’t know which channel or service is showing a specific sporting event.
This is an expensive problem for the industry. Pay TV operators, broadcasters, and streaming platforms are all investing heavily in live sports, recognizing that premium sporting rights can attract and retain paying subscribers.
Gracenote’s demographic data offers some encouragement. The 25-to-35 age group is the most willing to pay to watch live sports, at 78.5%. At the other end of the spectrum, just 44.8% of those aged 65 and over are willing to pay.
The 18-to-24 demographic is also surprisingly enthusiastic, with 68.6% expressing a willingness to pay for live sports.
However, we think that figure deserves some scrutiny given the prevalence of sports piracy, although the survey’s geographical scope—Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico, the US, and UK—excludes several of the major piracy strongholds across Asia Pacific.
Nevertheless, the underlying message shows a surprising appetite for paid live sports among younger audiences. The challenge is converting that willingness into paying customers.
Gracenote argues that sports distribution remains neither standardized nor centralized. The exclusivity surrounding live sporting rights creates a fragmented metadata landscape, leaving fans struggling to establish where specific events are available. As distribution spreads across an increasing number of platforms, this problem is only likely to intensify.
Further, more viewers are turning to highlights rather than watching live events, a trend that rights holders themselves are helping to accelerate. Broadcasters are increasingly using AI-powered clipping tools to publish highlights across social channels within minutes of the action taking place. But if rights holders don’t provide those clips, the sports clubs and other YouTube channels will, with YouTube an obvious destination for both legitimate and unauthorized footage.
In other words, the industry is making it easier than ever to consume fragments of live sports while making the full event increasingly difficult to find.
Gracenote’s proposed remedy is a better user experience, which it argues will drive long-term customer value, although the data suggests that discovery is only one part of a much bigger problem.
Price remains the number one reason for cancelling streaming subscriptions across all six countries surveyed. Not using a service enough comes second, while struggling to find relevant content ranks third.
In this context, the time spent finding something to watch looks like a minor irritation compared with the broader cost-of-living pressures affecting consumers. Improving discovery won’t necessarily persuade someone to keep paying for a service they can no longer afford, or simply don’t use enough.
EPG comeback:
Perhaps the most significant finding for the future concerns what consumers actually want from their streaming experience. “As wild as it sounds,” quips Gracenote, “viewers increasingly want something resembling the traditional television experience.”
Some 72.3% of respondents wish there were a way to consolidate the programming guides from all the services they use, allowing them to browse everything available to them in one place, according to Gracenote data. Nearly 70% also want their services to tell them where they can find a particular program, even when it is available on a competing platform.
Among younger adults, the appetite for a consolidated guide is even stronger. Some 78% want a single program guide covering multiple streaming services, up from 58% in last year’s report.
Faultline has been making this argument for years. Trends are cyclical, and the demand for simplicity has never gone away. The EPG will make a comeback just as free content has. The internet will remain the primary distribution mechanism, but the way audiences navigate and consume that content is likely to come full circle.
The demand is already there. Build it and they will come.
Consumers are pushing back against algorithms and yet another standalone application. They want to know what’s available, where to find it, and how to watch it..