Advanced Television

36% of audience doesn’t watch live

March 20, 2012

Thirty-six per cent of British viewers claim they no longer watch live TV, preferring to either access content on catch-up sites or PVRs.

Nearly two thousand people, aged 18 and over, were polled by discounts site My Voucher Codes to find out how prevalent time-shifted and on-demand viewing was throughout the UK.  Respondents were initially asked ‘Do you have a television?’ to which 98 per cent said ‘yes’. Of the two per cent that didn’t, when asked why not, the majority said that there was ‘no point’ because they could watch everything that they wanted to on their computer.

Those polled were then asked ‘Do you tend to watch programmes when they first air on the television?’ to which 36 per cent replied ‘no’. Those who said they did not watch live television were asked to explain why not, to which 52 per cent said that they ‘didn’t have time’. Of those that said they didn’t have time to watch live TV, the majority 74 per cent said they caught up with the programmes they wanted to watch at the weekend.

They were then asked to specify how they ‘caught up’. A quarter said that they watched the programmes that they wanted to by using ‘watch on demand sites’ such as the BBC iPlayer, ITV player and Channel 4 On Demand. Three per cent said that they preferred to ‘watch DVD box sets’ once they were released and 42 per cent said they had access to a service such as Sky+ and TiVo.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Consumer Behaviour, PVR, Research