Digital TV News

Brits watching more TV as recession bites

Thursday 6 May, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Britain is fast becoming a nation of ‘telly addicts’, with everyone watching an average of four hours and 18 minutes of TV a day, according to new research.

UK consumers watched a record average of four hours and 18 minutes of TV a day in the first three months of 2010, up from three hours and 46 minutes in the same period last year, according to figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board.

In total, viewers watched around 30 hours and four minutes of TV a week on average in the first quarter, an increase of two hours and 29 minutes year on year.

Commercial TV marketing body Thinkbox has attributed the rise to a number of factors, including the recession, an increase in the number of people using on-demand catch-up TV services, and an increase in the number of digital TV channels available.

Tess Alps, chief executive of Thinkbox, said: “Anyone who doubted the continuing importance and popularity of broadcast TV in the UK should hopefully be convinced by these new figures.”

However experts at Thinkbox predict that these record viewing figures will not continue, and that as digital TV finds its way into every home in the UK over the next two years, TV viewing will peak and stabilise.

Alps added: “We are nearing the peak, if we are not there already. Once analogue signals are finally turned off in 2012, the figures are likely to stabilise, but hopefully will remain at these high levels.”

Over 90% of homes in Britain already have digital TV, and the last regions are due to switchover from analogue terrestrial TV by 2012.