TV Viewing in the U.K. Continues to Rise

LONDON: The amount of time spent watching linear commercial TV in the U.K. hit record levels for the first half of the year, according to Thinkbox, driven by factors such as social media creating a "drive to live" for viewing.

The average U.K. TV viewer watched 18 hours, 9 minutes of commercial linear TV a week during the first six months of 2011, according to figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB). This breaks down to 2 hours, 35 minutes per day. Viewing increased 48 minutes a week (7 minutes a day) from the same period in 2010. The BARB figures show that commercial TV accounted for 64 percent of viewing from January to June, a 62-percent increase on the year prior.

Total TV viewing increased to 28 hours, 21 minutes a week (4 hours, 3 minutes a day), an increase of 6 minutes a week (51 seconds a day) over 2010. This modest gain suggests that total linear TV viewing is now stabilizing, after a period of record growth.

A number of factors are fueling this "drive to live" for TV viewing. One of which is social media, which is galvanizing audiences around watching and sharing TV live. Social media also fuels the increased risk of "spoilers," which makes live viewing more important. Other factors include increased choice of TV content, new technologies—DVRs and HDTVs—as well as the economic and weather conditions in the U.K. On-demand is also said to encourage more linear TV viewing.

Time-shifted viewing represented 9 percent of the U.K.’s TV watching for the first half of 2011, increasing from 7.1 percent in the 2010 period. A reported 47 percent of households own digital recorders. For these homes, average timeshifting represented 14.7 percent of total viewing. This was up from the 13.7 percent reported for the same period 2010.

Lindsey Clay, Thinkbox’s managing director, commented: “We’ve been saying for a while that linear TV viewing couldn’t keep breaking records forever and that it had to stabilise at some point. It appears that this is now happening—although, within this, commercial TV is still growing a little, which is great news for advertisers and a testament to the choice and quality it offers. On-demand TV is expanding total TV by adding to this stable linear base.

“What is clear is that every new technology that joins TV—from connected TV sets to social media—is making it even more enjoyable for viewers and even more effective for advertisers.”