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 from an average 15.5% in March 2000 to 19.9% in March 2001. The biggest loss of viewing share was at ITV, which, although with 28.5% it still commands the largest share of viewing, has decreased from a 30% average share year on year. BBC2 performed well in terms of increasing audience share in a year on year analysis, rising 6 percentage points to 11.3% share.
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 from 47.6% to 45.8% year on year. ITV also slipped in digital only homes from 20.9% to 19.8%. Channels 4 and 5 retained much the same share of viewing, while the BBC stations did well, with BBC1 rising from 17.7% to 19.5% of viewing year on year and BBC2 going from 5.1% to 6.1%.
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.
