Italy: FTA prime time TV viewing at 18 year low
November 4, 2021
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
An average of 23.1 million Italians watched free-to-air TV in the 20:30 to 22:30 time slot during October 2021, a drop of 2.5 million on the same month last year.
This means that less than 40 per cent of the total population were watching free-to-air TV in prime time, the lowest figure in 18 years, according to Auditel data processed by Studio Frasi.
All traditional broadcasters saw their audience figures fall during the entire day to 9.5 million viewers – 1 million less than in October 2020, the lowest figure in the last 11 years.
Meanwhile, the ‘others’ category saw 10.66 per cent annual growth; a group that includes SVoD players Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+. The platforms now reach 1.8 million viewers in prime time, or 7.9 per cent of the total, a share that rises to 14 per cent among smart TV owners.
In turn, viewing figures for smart TV sets are up by 93.9 per cent year-on-year, with the number of viewers tuning in at least one minute almost doubling, from 11.6 million to 21.8 million.
The worst performers were the thematic channels of public broadcaster RAI (excluding RaiNews24) that were affected, among other things, by the switchover from DVB-T to DVB-T2, which resulted in them no longer being available on older TV sets.