Digital TV News

UK viewers watch more than 4 hours of TV a day

Tuesday 24 January, 2012

By Duncan Heaney

Data shows we still love live TV.

The average television viewer in the UK watches four hours and two minutes of TV a day. That’s according to research from BARB , the broadcasting industry’s audience measurement body.

The data also shows that despite the proliferation of catch-up and on-demand TV services, the majority of us still prefer to watch programmes live.

In 2011, more than 90% of UK TV was viewed as it was broadcast. Less than 10% was watched through playback and on-demand services like Sky + or BBC iPlayer.

Although time-shifted TV only accounts for around a tenth of watched programmes, it’s still a significant increase from last year. Back in 2010, only 7.6% of television was watched after broadcast.

Lindsey Clay from Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, said: “It is obvious that people want to watch TV programmes on the best screen in the home if they can and 2012 will bring more opportunities to do that with the sale of connected TVs and more catch-up TV services to the TV set.”

BBC iPlayer, one of the most popular online catch-up services, recorded record viewing figures over the Christmas and New Year period. New Year’s Day was the busiest day - iPlayer received 5.4 million TV requests. The most popular show that day was Sherlock, with 623,000 hits, but the most watched programme across the festive period was the Top Gear Christmas special, which had 1.7 million views.

Photo by flash.pro