Ofcom: Television viewing declines by further 9 minutes in 2017

Ofcom has today published a report which has some interesting findings about television, radio and online consumption.

The amount of time spent viewing broadcast television on the TV in the UK has fallen for the sixth successive year. Between 2016 and 2017, viewing per person declined by 4.2% to 3 hours 22 minutes, down by nine minutes. This decline was driven mainly by younger audiences and has led to a widening gap by age. For example, in 2010 children spent half as long as over-64s watching broadcast TV. By 2017, viewing by over-64s had declined by a minute, while children’s viewing had declined by more than an hour, so that over-64s were watching four times as much as children.

The decline in broadcast TV viewing on the TV set has continued into 2018. From January to June 2018 (H1 2018), overall viewing for all individuals was down by 4.9% on the same period in 2017, to an average of 3 hrs 16 minutes per person per day. The decline applied to all age groups. Adults aged 16-34 had the biggest decline in viewing, down by 12% to 1 hr 51 minutes a day, and children are still the age group with the lowest level of viewing, at 1 hr 18 minutes a day. The fact that older people watch more TV remains true; the resilience of TV viewing by older people is slowing the overall decline in TV viewing at the all-individuals level. Nevertheless, viewing by over-54s fell by 2% in H1 2018. Looking at each month separately, all-individuals’ overall viewing was down by 4.8% in January, 3.2% in February, flat in March (-0.1%), down by 3.9% in April, 9.3% in May and 8.3% in June.