Digesting BARB’s numbers
BARB provides evidence on changes in the UK television market and its figures are the basis for justifying £7bn of investment each year in the UK. As it releases its first ever TV Landscape Report, Raymond Snoddy crunches the digits for himself.
You might think we need more numbers about television like a hole in the head.
Surely the TV numbers game never ends. But some numbers are more useful, and honest and reliable than others.
There are the numbers produced to feed the ideological predilections of Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, and those designed to demonstrate that one particular medium of communication is the one to put your money on in terms of reach, engagement, commitment, multiplier effect etc etc…
It is often close to miraculous how consultants can make the same numbers sing so many different tunes.
In the midst of all the endless numbers the arrival of the new quarterly UK Television Landscape Report from BARB is still welcome.
As far as humanly possible BARB has no particular axe to grind. It’s just the unvarnished viewing figures with, on occasions, some reasonable interpretations on those numbers.
The most remarkable thing about the Landscape Report is how few surprises lie within its pages and given the alarms stirred up by the futurologists that is a very useful quality.
Yet in answers that are perfectly straightforward the Landscape Report deals briskly with the sort of questions that help to float hundreds of media conferences – question such as: Is Netflix Taking Over? and Is The End of the TV Set Nigh, and by implication the British love affair with television fading?
And from the BARB establishment survey of 53,000 homes – the daily TV ratings come from a representative panel of 5,100 – also comes the latest information on who is watching on which platform and everything from the state of the game console market to the range of devices in what homes.
Let’s deal with the big one first. Are Netflix and the other subscription video on demand (SVOD) services going to take over from linear television?
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Of course not, except perhaps in the daydreams of Netflix founder Reed Hastings, but the reality cannot be spelled out often enough in the hope of preventing the weaker brethren being taken in by the soothsayers.
The word according to BARB is that although Netflix has undoubtedly been one of the success stories of the past three years with more than five million UK subscribers, it and the other lesser SVOD services such as Amazon Prime and Sky’s Now TV, are complements to, rather than a replacement for, mainstream television.
Unsurprisingly, SVOD appeals to larger, ABC1 households who already consume a large amount of television. There is also a bias towards homes which already have a pay TV service on satellite or cable.
So SVOD is not likely to bury either linear or Pay TV. In fact homes with Sky Movies are more likely to have SVOD, suggesting again that the new services act as a companion rather than a straight competitor to traditional pay services.
According to the report, even though SVOD reach is highest in homes with children and young adults (16-24-year olds), less than 50 per cent of young adults overall have access.
The dramatic rise of SVOD with 24 per of all UK households subscribing in the final quarter of last year, compared with 14 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, can now be easily tracked through the new quarterly publication.
The base line numbers are a little complicated with considerable overlap between the SVOD services. For instance there are 4.22 million Netflix-only subscribers but 692,000 Netflix/Amazon users and 366,000 Netflix/Now TV viewers.
Nearly 100,000 have Netflix, Now TV and Amazon.
Is this the high tide mark of SVOD or is there further growth to come?
A small rise in the number of homes not owning a TV set has also been seen in apocalyptic terms. The era of television is over, some say.
In the last quarter of 2015, 1.3 million households or 4.7 per cent of the total do not have a television set. In both 2013 and 2014 the number of TV-less homes has increased by around 200,000 a year.
Are these up-market households keen on protecting their children from the unfortunate influence of the box (of the sort you sometimes see interviewed in the Sunday colour supplements).
Or are they pioneers on their way to a new love – computer and tablet screens?
Not really. The figures show that they are probably less interested in “the television experience” than average and have lower levels of broadband and significantly less likely to have SVOD or own a tablet or PC.
Nearly 50 per cent of them are seen as young and “pre-family”, which might suggest that they might be encouraged to join the television revolution when they lose their “pre-family” status.
As for devices, the BARB Landscape survey says the numbers suggest robust growth can be still be expected for smartphones and HD TVs. Growth is plateauing for PCs, mobile phones in general and DVRs, while games console numbers have been falling steadily for the past two years.
Blocking the blockers
Meanwhile, while existing television lives on to fight for a few more quarters at least, there have been interesting developments in the coming battle against a threat that is all too real for traditional media – ad-blocking.
The French media, including television, radio and print websites, have decided to take concerted action against the one third of French internet users who have installed ad-blocking software.
Most media owners involved are now requiring consumers to disable the controversial software before they can receive an online news service.
Le Monde has, at least for now, been more polite and appealed to the better instincts of its online readers while still allowing them access to its website.
Le Monde explained how it has relied on advertising revenue to fund the 400 journalists who provide “high-quality, reliable and varied news each day.”
The UK has seen an increase in the use of ad-blocking and should surely follow the French example against those who want to read news online but are reluctant to help fund news in any way.
In the vanguard should be The Independent as it prepares to shed its physical print presence and go online-only.