Over the past few years, the amount of time the UK TV watching public has been consuming live broadcast television has been dropping. It was reported earlier this month by Ofcom that lately, the amount of viewers watching live broadcast television has fallen the most since the records first began.
For example, the proportion of people watching live TV has fallen from 83% in 2021 to 79% in 2022. Also, the average time spent watching broadcast TV per day has dropped from 2 hours 59 minutes in 2021 to 2 hours 38 minutes in 2022.
The switch to on-demand media has been an ongoing change for a long time. The BBC famously launched iPlayer back in 2007 and some TV channels are going online only in a few years. Streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+ have shows that are only shown on those platforms moving the audiences away from broadcast TV.
The need for the TV licence is another sticking point with the UK public, some believe it should be removed all together. As time goes on, people’s habits and choices they make when it comes to media consumption has changed and will change further. Gone are the days where we sit down at a specific time to watch something on TV.
