DTH satellite remains the most widely used TV reception infrastructure in Germany, even though the platform lost households over the past year.
According to the newly released Astra TV Monitor 2024, 16.02 million TV households, or 44.8%, received their TV channels via satellite at the end of 2024. A year earlier, the figure was still 16.53 million households (45.5%).
The biggest loser, however, was cable television. The number of cable households dropped from 15.11 million to 13.32 million within a year, reducing cable’s share from 41.6 to 37.3%. Industry observers attribute this sharp decline primarily to the abolition of a legislation which allowed landlords to include the cable TV subscription in the monthly rent, turning tenants into cable TV households, whether they used the service or not. Since 1 July 2024, households have had the choice of whether to continue paying for cable or switch to other reception modes.
The main winner of this change is IPTV. The number of IPTV households jumped from 3.49 million (9.6%) to 4.71 million (13.2%) within a year. Terrestrial television via DVB-T2 also recorded growth, from 1.22 million (3.4%) to 1.68 million households (4.7%).
HD television is now the standard across all infrastructures. In total, 33.21 million households, or 93%, watch in HD quality. With 15.17 million HD households, satellite remains the strongest platform for HD reception, ahead of cable (11.65 million), IPTV (4.71 million) and terrestrial television (1.67 million).
“Satellite remains the most popular reception platform in Germany. Viewers appreciate that there are no ongoing reception fees, combined with a wide range of channels, stable signal quality and excellent picture quality,” said Christoph Mühleib, Managing Director of SES Germany, which operates the SES and Astra business in the DACH region. He added that SES continues to invest in innovations such as the HD+ TV app to make satellite reception even more convenient.
The Astra TV Monitor is compiled annually by market research institute Kantar on behalf of Astra. For the current edition, 6,000 households across Germany were surveyed between November and December 2024. The study considers the primary reception mode of each household.
The study can be downloaded free of charge at www.astra.de/presse/astra-tv-monitor-2024-satellit-ist-der-meistgenutzte-tv-empfangsweg-deutschland.
