ITV Slips While Non-Terrestrials Improve In Digital Television Homes

Digital viewing figures for this month show that non-terrestrial channels continue to command an impressive share of viewing in homes with digital television. The average share of viewing in digital homes for these channels during August was 52.4%, compared to 50.6% in July. This has corresponded with a growth in viewing share for non-terrestrial channels across all homes, up from 17.06% average for July to 18.63% average for August.

ITV’s viewing figures have been showing marked signs of decline recently (see Feature: Channels With “Mass-Appeal” Slip As TV Market Fragments) and in digital homes this has been particularly apparent. While the networks audience share across all homes and terrestrial homes slipped around one percentage point each from July to August, in digital homes, August’s average share for ITV was 15.4%, compared to 17.26% in July.

The situation cannot be helped by the fact that Sky Digital has still not come to any arrangement about carrying ITV on its platform; currently Sky Digital viewers have to manually switch back to the analogue signal in order to view ITV output (see Feature: Terrestrial Stations Lose Out As Digital Gains Ground). The difference in ITV audience share in ONdigital homes, compared to Sky Digital homes, is obvious on the graph below.

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