Linear TV still rules, but online rising quickly
Jason Mander, head of trends at GlobalWebIndex, looks at how TV viewing habits are changing across the globe.
We’re all used to hearing about the increasingly online nature of our daily lives as well as the shift from traditional to digital forms of media. But while these trends are much discussed, it’s relatively rare to find them being quantified in any meaningful way.
Over the last three years, GlobalWebIndex has sought to remedy this – monitoring how long internet users in 32 different markets say they’re spending on various media-related activities each day (covering everything from time spent on mobiles, PCs and games consoles to the number of hours we’re devoting to online and traditional forms of TV, radio and print press). Based on interviews with more than 170,000 adults per annum, the results offer striking confirmation that online television is very much in the ascendancy.
Of course, one (rather large) caveat is needed here: linear TV is not being abandoned. Despite consistent rises for online viewing – and an increasing array of internet-only or internet-first content – traditional TV still rules the roost. It accounts for the biggest share of our time each day and, by some distance, remains the single biggest media activity.
Globally, in fact, we’re still watching around 2.5 hours of linear TV each day (representing nearly a quarter of our total media time). That compares to just 0.7 hours spent on online viewing.
That noted, the average time spent on online TV rose between 2012 and 2014 in almost every country surveyed by GlobalWebIndex (just as the number of hours devoted to linear TV fell very slightly in the majority of countries).
Although the declines are far from dramatic, the direction of travel is clear: we’re seeing a small and gradual migration away from linear towards online, driven – among other things – by the easy availability of online catch-up and streaming services as well as the creation of online-only content from names such as Amazon, Netflix and the BBC. It also reflects growing usage of mobiles and tablets as content consumption devices.
This picture can vary significantly at a national level, though. In several mature markets – including Australia, France, Japan, the Netherlands and Poland – typical daily time spent on linear TV is at least five times greater than the equivalent devoted to online forms.
Overall, it’s Americans who remain the biggest linear TV consumers of all (watching an average of some 3.4 hours per day). In contrast, internet populations in several fast-growth markets have embraced online TV more fervently.
In China, for example, people are now watching just 1.17 hours of linear TV. It’s also in this country where online and linear viewing are closest to reaching parity: the former now captures 1.03 hours per day among Chinese internet users, indicating that this could be the first market where – as we’ve already seen in most countries in relation to print press – online takes the lead.
By far the most striking trends emerge if we look at television viewing behaviours by age. When the BBC announced its intention to shift its youth-oriented BBC Three channel online, there was a predictable – but nevertheless sizeable – outcry from most quarters.
The Corporation defended the decision by asserting that “for this [younger] generation… iPlayer is a key part of the future for public service broadcasting. It’s the gateway for people who increasingly want to watch and listen to what they want, when they want it – on tablets, on mobiles as well as other screens.”
GWI’s figures confirm that it is indeed younger viewers who are engaging with online TV the most enthusiastically. For a start, linear viewing rises directly in line with age – from just 2.1 hours per day among 16-24s to 3.33 hours for 55-64s. If we then turn our attention to online TV, 16-24s (1.02 hours) are now watching four times as much per day as 55-64s (0.25 hours).
And strong levels of year-on-year growth for the two youngest groups are plain to see; among 16-24s, for example, average daily viewing has climbed from 0.82 hours in 2012 to 1.02 hours in 2014. Currently, that means they’re the only age group already spending a daily average of 1 hour+ on online TV.
Age-based differences are even starker when the figures are converted to percentages: in the youngest group, a third of the total time spent watching television is on online forms. By way of comparison, the equivalent figure among 55-64s is just 7%.
Although BBC Three’s fate is far from finalised, it’s not hard to understand the reasons why the Corporation’s youth channel, rather than BBC4, was selected for the move to online.