The average UK television viewer watched an average of 4 hours, 1 minute a day of linear TV on a TV set, a minute below the record level set in 2011. Full year viewing figures for 2012 from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), released by Thinkbox, show 2012 to be the third consecutive year when TV audiences held steady.
Figures released by broadcasters to Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, show viewers also watched an average of 3 minutes a day of TV through non-traditional devices, mostly on demand but some live streams.
These were drawn from established services such as ITV Player, Sky Go, 4oD and BBC iPlayer, and new services like Dave On-demand. This is the first time the average amount of TV watched via devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops has been quantified. It amounts to an average of three 30-minute TV episodes a month per viewer (90 minutes).
Thinkbox says the growth in non-traditional device viewing could be balanced by the increasing availability of such services in the TV itself.
51% of UK households now own a PVR compared to 50% in 2011. In households that own PVRs, 84.4% of linear TV was watched live compared to 84.7% in 2011. The level of timeshifting has been very stable since the first PVRs were released ten years ago. 81% of all timeshifted viewing is watched within seven days of recording. 47% of timeshifted viewing is seen within 24 hours of it being recorded
BARB’s figures do not yet include TV viewed on devices other than TV sets.
