Gains Reported in U.K. TV Viewing

LONDON: In its survey on the communications markets in 12 major territories, Ofcom found that TV viewing in the U.K. rose by 3 percent last year, the biggest gain out of all the countries featured in the report.

The British media regulator’s International Communications Market report looks at the £548-billion communications market in 12 territories, analyzing use of TV, radio, broadband and telephony.

Among the key findings is that the U.K. has the highest proportion of digital TV homes, at 88 percent, followed by the U.S. (76 percent), France (72 percent), Japan (65 percent), Italy (63 percent) and Canada (61 percent), with Germany lagging behind at just 37 percent.

TV viewing per day in the U.K. stands at 225 minutes. This is less than the U.S. (277 minutes), Italy (234 minutes), Poland (232 minutes), Spain (227 minutes) and Canada (228 minutes), but ahead of Germany (207 minutes), France (204 minutes), the Netherlands (184 minutes), Ireland (186 minutes) and Sweden (160 minutes). The U.K. recorded the biggest increase in per-day viewing, of 3 percent, while the biggest decrease was seen in Poland, at 3.7 percent.

In the U.K., the number of homes paying for HD by the end of 2008 was 1.3 million, the same as France, ranking behind the U.S. (21.7 million) and Canada (2.2 million), but ahead of Germany (200,000) and Italy (100,000).
Of the markets surveyed, France showed the biggest increase in multichannel viewing share, rising by 26 percent to 22 percent. In the U.K., multichannel viewing share gained 7.9 percent to 40 percent.

Italy had the highest terrestrial viewing share, at 84 percent, followed by France at 78 percent and Germany at 68 percent. The U.S. had the highest multichannel viewing share, of 72 percent.