British Watching More Commercial TV

LONDON: The average viewer in the U.K. watched 16 hours and 20 minutes of commercial broadcast TV a week from January to September this year, up 11 minutes from the same period last year, according to new figures from Thinkbox.

Commercial TV accounted for 63.5 percent of total broadcast TV viewing in the first 9 months of 2009, an increase of 5.3 percent in the last five years. The total broadcast TV viewing in January to September was 25.73 hours a week, which is stable with the same period last year but up 28 minutes a week on the representative five-year average for the period.

Tess Alps, Thinkbox’s chief executive, commented: “It’s unrealistic to expect these levels to continue forever, but they do prove the huge popularity of broadcast TV in the U.K. Once analogue switchover is complete in 2012 the figures are likely to stabilize, but hopefully at these high levels. Advertisers are taking advantage of these great audiences and broadcast TV will increase its share of overall advertising in 2009, albeit within a severe advertising recession. On demand TV viewing and advertising revenue is in addition to these figures.”

The increase in commercial viewing has also meant an increase in the number of ads people watch. The number of ads watched at normal speed from January to September were up 2.7 percent on the same period last year and 15 percent more than the last five years, with the average viewer watching 43 ads a day.