{"id":4071,"date":"2014-11-18T14:18:27","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T14:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2014-11-18T14:22:36","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T14:22:36","slug":"breaking-news-most-people-still-watch-linear-television-most-of-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/breaking-news-most-people-still-watch-linear-television-most-of-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking News: Most People Still Watch Linear Television Most of the Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not normal. And neither am I. <\/p>\n

You and I probably have a bit of an unhealthy interest in all things media – radio in particular. <\/p>\n

You probably don’t watch an enormous amount of television – less than the 3 hours and 52 minutes a day that was the average viewing time in 2013.<\/p>\n

You might not even own a TV – watching iPlayer or Netflix on your tablet or laptop.<\/p>\n

But you are not normal. <\/p>\n

Sorry. But it’s true.<\/p>\n

I do get slightly fed up when I repeatedly hear that “people don’t watch television any more” or similar claims. There does seem to be a prevailing view amongst some – in the technology industry in particular – that people are effectively watching all their TV viewing on demand. That might be via their PVR, or it might be via iPlayer\/Netflix\/Amazon. <\/p>\n

Most recently I heard the claim in discussion about the “Dapper Laughs” furore. Surely being on television makes no difference in this YouTube\/Vine world? Who watches live TV any more? <\/p>\n

Well, er, TV really does matter.<\/p>\n

Most people in the UK watch television (94.4%<\/a> of the population in the most recent week on the BARB website).<\/p>\n

Most of the time they spend watching TV it is live (89%<\/a> of all viewing in 2013 according to BARB, as reported by Ofcom).<\/p>\n

It might seem incredible. But it’s true. You and I might pick and choose all our viewing in advance, and largely watch it back on-demand, with perhaps exceptions for news, sports or big reality shows (the latter being less an issue for me).<\/p>\n

But let me reiterate: we’re not normal<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Even though PVR ownership, and access to services like the iPlayer have grown enormously, viewers have not shifted as fast as people sometimes think they have.<\/p>\n

And that’s really important when we make broad brush-stroke comments about the importance of TV.<\/p>\n

Here are some charts from the annual Ofcom Communications Market Report 2014<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"OfcomAllIndivids\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

This shows that of the average 232 minutes a day UK individuals spent watching television in 2013, 206 minutes (89%) were live<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Even if you break that down and look at viewing by age, you can see that even in the demo that does the most time-shifted viewing (25-34s), 83% of viewing is still live:<\/p>\n

\"OfcomByAge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

OK. Not every home has a PVR (or DVR as Ofcom calls it). So what about if we limit our analysis to homes that are more capable of watching time-shifted viewing (which kind of ignores iPlayer and 4OD apps), the story is broadly the same – 83% of viewing is live: <\/p>\n

\"OfcomDVR\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And the trends show that this isn’t actually changing all that fast. There will be changes in the future. You’d expect that if the BBC Trust allows BBC 3 to go online only, that’ll make a difference. And increased availability of PVR-functionality or access to IP delivered on-demand streaming, will also make a difference. But it’s not as fast as you’d think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not normal. And neither am I. You and I probably have a bit of an unhealthy interest in all things media – radio in particular. You probably don’t watch an enormous amount of television – less than the 3 hours and 52 minutes a day that was the average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[337,338,556,148],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4088,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions\/4088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}