Digital TV News

Growth in online TV viewing slows down

Wednesday 4 January, 2012

By Duncan Heaney

Improved set-top boxes and internet-connected TV cited as reasons for dwindling web audience.

Last year, online TV viewing appeared to be growing quickly. More and more people were choosing to watch TV on their computers, both live and through catch-up services, like BBC iPlayer. But new research from Barb, the broadcasting industry’s audience measurement body, indicates that the growth is slowing down.

The organisation conducts a biannual survey that looks at how people watch TV in selected weeks. The most recent study examined the habits of approximately 4,000 people during a seven-day period in November 2011.

Almost 15% of the study’s participants said they watched TV on a PC, laptop or tablet computer during the week of the study. That is an increase compared to last year, but only a very small one - just 0.5% more than the same week in 2010.

The previous year’s study had shown dramatic growth in the number of people watching TV online – from 11.9% in 2009 to 14.4% in 2010.

Barb points to digital set-top boxes and the increasing availability of TV catch-up services on web-enabled TVs - Sky + and Virgin TV On Demand, for example. That seems to make sense to us - why set up BBC iPlayer on a laptop or PC, when you can just slob out on the sofa and watch it on a big screen?

Although the number of people using computers to watch TV is slowing, mobile phone viewers continue to increase rapidly. The number of people that watch TV on a smartphone saw big growth – 3% admitted to watching TV on a mobile during the study period – up from 1.9% in November 2010, and 1.1% in November 2009.

Predictably, the younger age groups (15-34 year olds) are fastest to embrace mobile TV. Almost 10% of this age range said they had watched TV on a mobile in November 2011, up from 5.8% in 2010.

Photos by Dan Zen