Feature: Terrestrial Stations Lose Out As Digital Gains Ground
Digital television is gradually building its presence in the UK, having attracted more than three million customers across the terrestrial, satellite and cable platforms. BSkyB became the first company to roll out a digital TV service commercially when Sky Digital launched in October 1998; digital terrestrial followed in November with the arrival of ONdigital and cable’s digital offerings are now gradually starting to emerge.
One of the key features of digital TV is that it allows many more channels and interactive services to be delivered to viewers’ TV sets than the current analogue system permits. All good and well for the viewer, perhaps, but where does this leave the UK’s five main terrestrial TV channels? Very early figures analysed in Media Track in November last year showed that in Sky Digital homes ITV’s share of viewing came in at around 23%; this compared to an average share of 32% in all TV homes.
More substantial data, taken each week this year until 16 April, show this trend holding, with an ITV share at 23.2% in Sky Digital Homes and 30.3% in all homes. ITV’s share in ONdigital homes also averages 23.2% so far in 2000. The fact that ITV’s share is equal in Sky Digital and ONdigital homes is significant considering that ITV is still currently unavailable on Sky’s system – Sky Digital viewers have to manually switch back to their analogue reception in order to view ITV.
The other terrestrial channels all show significantly lower shares of viewing in digital homes; on average these channels are taking a share which is 30% lower in than in all television homes. By comparison, viewing to non-terrestrial channels (shown as Others in the chart) is more than two and a half times higher (162%) in satellite and terrestrial digital homes than in all homes.
ONdigital’s customer base is currently just over half a million, whilst Sky Digital has about 2.6 million subscribers. Viewing patterns by the two companies’ customers appear to be slightly different. BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 all take a lower share of viewing in ONdigital houses than Sky Digital homes. The deficit is made up by ONdigital viewers with a greater share of viewing to Channel 5 and the non-terrestrial channels. In ONdigital homes, non-terrestrial channels account for 40.9% of total viewing; in Sky homes, this drops to 38.9% and in all homes falls all the way back to 15.3%. What is clear from this, is that when the population adopts digital TV en masse, as it ultimately must, the traditional free-to-air terrestrial stations will almost certainly take a pounding.