“Features films on TV are back, and have found a second youth with the development of DTT and new channels launched within the last two years,” according to Jacques Braun, VP of Eurodata TV Worldwide, at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival.
Eurodata TV combines television research from countries around the world. According to this, over the past few years worldwide TV consumption has continued to grow and reached a new record in 2010 with an average daily viewing time across the world of 3 hours and 10 minutes, an increase of six minutes over the last five years.
This growth is also notable among the young adults, with an increase of 14 minutes in the UK, five minutes in US and three minutes in France. Even if the increase in TV consumption has benefited all genres, over the last two years feature films have been one of the principal winners.
2010 was marked by the rise of feature films among the national top 10 ranking broadcasts around the world. From 2008 to 2010, the proportion of feature films doubled (8% in 2008 vs 15% in 2010). US blockbusters and local productions are the main drivers of this renaissance: strong movie brands such as Pirates of the Caribbean or Harry Potter and the hugely successful French comedy Welcome to the sticks attract the highest audiences.
The return of feature films to the forefront also relies on the development of DTT and new channels, according to Eurodata TV. Today, the new channels (as opposed to the traditional private and public channels) have an increasingly important market share (44.9% in the UK, 31.1% in France). “If the latest blockbusters are still the preserve of traditional leaders, the growing channels offer allows classical movies to find a second youth. The romantic classic Dirty Dancing attracted the best ever audience of the French channel TMC with an 8.3% market share (vs 3.4% on the same time slot over the previous months).” according to Eurodata TV.
Movies are still being consumed out of proportion to their availability, with comedies and thrillers proving particularly popular on the main channels. In Spain, for instance, the feature film offer stands at 11%, while its consumption is close to 18%.
As analysed in the “Feature Films on TV” report, to be released soon, the growing consumption of TV and feature film on TV goes hand to hand with the spread of HDTV and the beginning of 3D, as well as the explosion of IP delivered movies and the development of time shifted viewing.
