Digital Television Round-Up – March 2001

Digital television viewing figures for March shows that non-terrestrial channels continue to grow audiences in general terms, having increased their share of viewing across all homes. The biggest loss of viewing share was at ITV, which, although it still commands the largest share of viewing, has seen a decrease in share year on year. BBC2 performed well in terms of increasing audience share in a year on year analysis, rising 6 percentage points.

It continues to be a different story in digital only homes, where non-terrestrial channels, while still commanding the largest slice of the viewing pie, slipped year on year. ITV also slipped in digital only homes. Channels 4 and 5 retained much the same share of viewing, while the BBC stations did well.

For Sky Digital versus ONdigital homes, the terrestrial channels continue to do better in ONdigital homes, while the non-terrestrials find a larger audience share, of more than 45%, in Sky Digital homes. It must be noted that Sky’s subscriber base remains considerably larger than ONdigital’s, although the latter is due to release its latest subscription figures in the next fortnight.

Subscribers can access more digital viewing figures in the Television database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.