Should you be so inclined, the annual BARB-based figures released by Thinkbox -- which show a near 5% decline in the average amount of time that Britons watch television -- are the perfect excuse to
starting ringing alarm bells about the decline of television. However, if you're intent on looking at the bigger picture, you will find that 98.4% of television shows, including those viewed within a
seven-day catch-up window, are actually viewed on the box we all have in the living room.
Compared to the average Brit watching 3 hours and 41 minutes of television on a traditional set each day,
just 3 minutes and 30 seconds are watched on a mobile phone, tablet or laptop.
So there has been a slight decline in television watching, but the figures suggest this has mainly come
from the heaviest consumers -- the real couch potatoes -- watching a little less television, rather than the average consumer.
Now, I know what you're thinking. These are average figures, and
yes, you're right. That surely means that television is being consumed by us middle-aged dinosaurs while the youth are switched off to the box in the living room and are doing their own thing on a
mobile device of their choice. Well, yes, but only very marginally so. Youth television viewing dropped just 7% in 2014, yet television remains the dominant channel to reach the youth on. Strangely
enough, I stumbled on a YouTube statistic this morning that states half of their viewers are over 35.
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The second elephant in the room is that people may be watching fractionally less
television than before, but the time they are committing to the channel is now devoted to Netflix and catch-up services. Actually, the facts are that in 2013, 89% of viewing was of live linear
television and in 2014 that has fallen by a whole, staggering single percentage point, to 88%. So that leaves 12% to other types of catch-up and on-demand content which must surely be watched on a
mobile device? Well, actually no -- the catch-up and on demand gap is definitely there, but according to BARB and Thinkbox just 1.6% of all television consumption happens away from a television
set.
Put it this way. If a digital marketer were to offer you, the brand, a channel that has a near 95% reach among the general public who consume it for the best part of three and
three-quarter hours every day, with two-thirds of that time spent on commercial channels, I think you would be very unlikely to see it as a dinosaur channel that other brands are shunning in a bid to
be more relevant in a digital age.
These are all salient points to bear in mind next time you're at a conference and a guru is revealing how television is in crisis because big brands are
moving their spend into social or programmatic display. Sure, these things may well be happening in isolation, but the big picture is that the country's heaviest television viewers are watching a
little less (which is probably not a bad thing), yet still, 95% of the population are spending two-thirds of their near three-and-a-quarter hours of television watching tuned into commercial
channels.
If that is the death rattle of a channel on its last knees, I can certainly think of some channels created by digital marketing that would kill for such a fate.