Youngsters continue to turn away from traditional TV; radio listening up
For the first time, less than half of 16-24-year-olds are now watching broadcast TV in an average week, according to Ofcom’s annual study into the nation’s media habits.
Just 48% of young audiences tuned in in an average week last year, down from 76% in 2018. Children aged 4-15 are tuning out at a similar rate, with only 55% watching broadcast TV each week in 2023, compared to 81% in 2018. Overall, the weekly reach of traditional TV fell by a record amount in the last year.
Younger audiences aged 16-24 aren’t just watching broadcast TV less frequently, they’re also watching for shorter periods at only 33 minutes each day – down 16% year on year. Of this, a mere 20 minutes is spent watching live TV.
In comparison, they’re spending three times as long each day (1 hour 33 minutes) watching video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
– Overall, people in the UK watched more TV and video content at home in 2023, averaging 4 hours and 31 minutes a day (an increase of 6 minutes/2% since 2022). This was primarily driven by an increase in daily viewing to video-sharing platforms (up 12% to 49 minutes) and to broadcasters’ video-on-demand services, such as iPlayer and ITVX (up 29% to 20 minutes).
Related to this
.
ATN Bangla UK in breach for late Ofcom payment
– TV screens are rapidly becoming more popular for watching YouTube content. Thirty-four per cent of time spent watching YouTube at home is now on a TV set – up from 29% in 2022. This increases to 45% among children aged 4-15 – up from 36% in 2022.
Radio listening continues to grow
– The first quarter of 2024 saw the highest number of weekly radio listeners across all devices in the past twenty years (just under 50 million). Listening time is also up year on year to an average of 20.5 hours per week.
– Much of this is down to commercial radio’s continued success – just over seven in 10 people aged 15+ tune into commercial stations at least once a week (70.4%) compared to 55.6% for BBC stations.
– Online radio listening continues to grow steadily, overtaking analogue radio (AM/FM) for the first time this year and now accounting for over a quarter (28%) of all live radio hours, mostly through smart speakers.
