Feature: Pay-TV Channels Account For Almost Half Of All Viewing In Digital Homes
This October digital television will be two years old in the UK following the launch of BSkyB’s Sky Digital service in 1998. The last time Newsline looked at digital TV viewing (see Feature: Terrestrial Stations Lose Out As Digital Gains Ground) Sky had signed up just over two and a half million subscribers to its service; the group has added another million in the meantime, taking its customer base to 3.6 million. NTL and Cable & Wireless have completed their merger and reach 230,000 digital homes combined, whilst ONdigital’s terrestrial service has just over a quarter of a million subscribers. Cable group Telewest has been experiencing set-top box manufacture problems and currently has just 156,000 digital customers.
One of the key challenges faced by the main free-to-air broadcasters lies in maintaining audience share against a digital market offering more and more channels, interactive services, programming on demand and a host of other audience-fragmenting services. In May ITV’s share of viewing in Sky Digital homes stood at 23.2%, as against 30.3% in all homes. According to average viewing between 6 February and 30 July, ITV’s share has fallen to 19.6% in Sky Digital homes and stands at 29.6% in All Homes. This is a loss across the country of just 0.7% points, but a decline of 3.6% points in Sky Digital homes.
Similar viewing patterns are developing for the other free-to-air stations. BBC1’s share in All Digital Homes is 17.6%, whilst it commands 26.8% of viewing across All Homes. Channel 4’s share falls from 10.5% to 5.8% between All Homes and Digital Homes; C5’s more than halves, from 5.8% to 2.7%. Not surprisingly, share to pay-TV channels, shown as Other in the chart, is 48.9% in Digital Homes – this compares to the All Homes average of just 16.2%.
The shares in different TV homes are fairly comparable, as the total TV viewing per week in each is similar. Sky Digital customers watch the most television, 27.3 hours a week, whilst ONdigital viewers, despite having bought a subscription, watch the least TV at just 21.9 hours a week. Interestingly though, ONdigital customers are still keener viewers of the traditional terrestrial channels than Sky and cable customers are. ITV, for example, takes a 24.3% share in ONdigital homes, but just 19.6% in Sky Digital houses.
The trend, however, is that the five free-to-air broadcasters are losing out in digital households and judging by the BARB figures shown here, it won’t be long before pay-TV channels take more than half of all viewing in digital homes.