Terrestrial Channels’ Share Falls Back In Digital Homes

The first wave of audience data for viewing in Sky Digital television homes shows a substantial fall in viewing share for the main terrestrial channels. The figures, which are currently only available to BARB subscribers, show that share of viewing for both BBC1 and ITV is over 8% points lower in Sky Digital homes than the UK TV household average.

For the week ending 7 November, ITV’s viewing share in digital satellite homes came in at 23.8%; this is 8.1% points lower than the 31.9% share the Network took in all TV homes. BBC1’s share was a similar 8.6% points lower in digital homes, at 18.2%. BBC2’s share dropped back 3.5% points to 7.1% in digital satellite homes; Channel 4’s was down 4.9% points at 5.7% and Channel 5 lost 3.4% points with a share of 2.7%.

For the ITV Network, however, this is not a bad figure considering that ITV is not available on the Sky Digital platform (see BSkyB Fails To Gain Access To ITV2). As a result, Sky Digital customers would have to manually switch their set-top boxes back to analogue in order to watch ITV. In this particular week, though, ITV screened the first three episodes of the new series of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. It has been speculated that in a week of ITV’s normal schedule, share would be likely to fall even further in digital homes.

The ITV Network’s refusal to be carried on Sky Digital has been instigated mainly at the behest of Carlton and Granada, the two ITV companies which own digital terrestrial broadcaster, ONdigital. At present the Network is united in the policy. However, if viewing share were to show serious signs of falling in Sky Digital homes, of which there are currently around two million, both the ITV companies and advertisers alike may put pressure on Carlton and Granada to join BSkyB’s service.

As this is the very first set of digital viewing data subscribers are still fairly new to the format. This means it is likely that viewers are experimenting with the range of new services available to them more than they might, say, in six months’ time. As a result, the established and well-known terrestrial channels may have seen their shares take a particularly large tumble during this early period.

This first wave of figures does not include viewing in ONdigital homes. BARB is planning to measure ONdigital viewing through a picture matching technique beginning at the end of this year, followed by a ‘probe’ system (see New Measurement Device For Digital Data).