It happened around the world, and now it’s happening in the United States: The more people stay home to avoid the coronavirus pandemic, the more they find themselves glued to their screens.

In South Korea, as cases spiked, television viewership shot up 17 percent, according to Nielsen. Last month in Italy, the size of the TV audience increased 6.5 percent, with a 12 percent rise in hard-hit Lombardy.

The same trend has arrived in the United States. In the Seattle area, total television use increased 22 percent on March 11 from the week before, according to Nielsen. In New York that day, as more people started working from home, use went up 8 percent. (Total use, as defined by Nielsen, includes live television, on-demand viewing, streaming and gaming.)

But for media companies, the benefit of having a bigger-than-usual audience may be short-lived as the outbreak threatens to undercut the very structure of their business. With businesses scaling back workers and analysts warning of a recession as global economies slow, a significant number of viewers may decide in the coming months to break away from cable or cut back on streaming subscriptions.