Digital Television Thriving In The UK

More people are watching digital television in the UK than ever before, according to Ofcom’s latest Digital Progress Report.

Digital television viewing in the first quarter of 2006 in the UK was up from 69.5% at the end of 2005 to 72.5% or 18.2 million. For the first time, digital terrestrial households exceeded analogue terrestrial only households.

Take-up of digital television is growing faster than expected. Ofcom’s last report of this nature forecast that an extra 1.7 million homes would take up digital television in 2006. By the end of March, almost 800,000 extra households had already done so. Free-to-view digital households (consisting of Freeview plus free-to-view satellite) are estimated to have grown by 9.7% from January to March to over 7.7 million.

Freeview has for the first time overtaken traditional analogue television on primary sets in the home. Almost 7.1 million households have Freeview on the primary television set compared to around 6.4 million who are yet to take-up digital television.

Freeview sales for January to March were up 40% on the same period in 2005 at over 1.2 million, making this the third successive quarter in which sales have exceeded one million.

Ofcom estimates that the number of households with Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) as the only digital platform had grown to around 7.1 million by the end of March 2006. Whilst all homes using DTT equipment was estimated to be around 8.8 million.

Digital satellite is the UK’s most popular digital television platform, viewed by 8.3 million, or 30% of homes, of which almost 7.7 million subscribe to BSkyB pay services and 645,000 receive free-to-view satellite services.

The number of cable television households has increased slightly over the quarter and is currently just over 3.3 million.

As at 31 March 2006, Ofcom estimates that 72.5% of UK households could receive digital TV services, up from 69.5% at 31 December 2005.

The news will be very welcome for Freeview, who is shortly set to overtake Sky in terms of subscribers. According to a recent report by ZenithOptimedia, 60% of all new digital homes will take the service in 2006 and 2007. The report states that Freeview will become the largest digital platform in the UK, overtaking Sky Digital.

Ofcom: 020 7981 3040 www.ofcom.org.uk