IPA Report Shows Continual Decline In TV Viewing

The report suggests that the major channels continue to suffer from the growth of the non-terrestrial channels, which have significantly extended their patronage over the past year and are now reaching 65% of the potential audience in a week. Channel 4, however, has had another good quarter, scoring the highest rise of the terrestrial channels, up 0.7 percentage points to 10.4%.

TV viewing hours have fallen for the seventh successive quarter year on year, with the British population now viewing an average of 3.43 hours a day. But digital reception continues to grow, with rapid growth in digital terrestrial take-up in particular, which is now heading towards 30% of the television population. Digital television in all its forms is now in two-thirds of television households.

Whilst some small effect from the World Cup is seen in the share figures for BBC1 and ITV, ITV’s share of impacts has fallen once again, with ITV1 recording a figure of 31.7% for the second quarter of 2006.

ITV1’s share of audience also slipped to almost 20% compared with almost 21% for the same time last year. BBC One scored 23.5% of the audience, slightly down on the same period last year.

According to reports in the Financial Times last month, media buyers have estimated that advance ad bookings for ITV1 in September are down as much as 12% year on year, with the decline encouraging the broadcaster to accept late bookings.

Channel 4’s share of viewing was up 2.6 points to 20.6%. Other sales houses to see a rise were GMTV, BSkyB (up 0.3 percentage points to 12.2%), and IDS, the Flextech sales house. Five fell by 1.5 percentage points to 9.8%.

Lynne Robinson, IPA research director, said: “This latest dataset portrays an increasingly gloomy picture for terrestrial television, particularity ITV, whose share is declining within a declining market. Added to this, the non terrestrial channels are far more successful in attracting the key 16-34 audience.”