Move away from linear TV accelerates

The proportion of UK viewers who tune in to traditional broadcast TV each week has seen the sharpest ever annual fall – from 83% in 2021 to 79% in 2022, according to the Media Nations 2023 report from communications regulator Ofcom.

Context

In 2019, pre-pandemic, 88% tuned into broadcast TV every week. A year later, streaming services saw subscriptions increase as people stuck at home looked for new ways to entertain themselves. Around two thirds of UK households now subscribe to at least one such service. Analysts at Enders, reported by the Financial Times, expect viewing of linear broadcasting to shrink from two-thirds to less than half of total video viewing by 2028 as streaming services advance.

Time spent is down too

• The average time spent watching broadcast TV each day was down 12%, from 2 hours 59 minutes in 2021, to 2 hours 38 minutes in 2022.
• There was also an 8% drop among ‘core’ older audiences (aged 65+), who appear increasingly likely to take up streaming services.
• For the first time, 16-24-year-olds watched less broadcast TV on average than children aged 4-15 (39 minutes per day compared to 41), as they tune in to only one or two programmes per day (typically sport and popular entertainment or reality programming).
• The average amount of time spent watching TV and video content across all devices in 2022 was 4 hours 28 minutes per person per day, down 12% on 2021 when Covid-19 restrictions may have meant people were spending more time at home watching content.

Key takeaway

The number of programmes with more than four million TV viewers has halved over the past eight years, from 2,490 in 2014, to 1,184 in 2022. At the same time, only 48 programmes averaged more than 4 million TV viewers on streaming platforms in 2022, illustrating, Ofcom said, “just how fragmented the viewing landscape has become”.

Sourced from Ofcom, Financial Times
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