BARB News

In recent years new forms of TV viewing have emerged that are not yet measured as part of the BARB service but for which measurement solutions are being sought. These include the ability to watch programmes on a PC or laptop via the internet, or via a 3G mobile phone.

BARB has kept track of the uptake of these new services by using a questionnaire on an omnibus survey. This does not give detailed measurement of usage, but does give an indication of the extent to which these services have been taken up. Here are some of the latest results, collected across May and June 2008.

Chart 1 shows the proportion of Adults claiming to have watched television programmes via the internet. 18% claimed to have done this at some time; 13% within the past month and 8% within the past week. Among 15-34 year olds these proportions were noticeably higher at 28%, 21% and 12% respectively.

The overall profile of these viewers is shown in Chart 2, based on those claiming to view via the internet in the past week. This shows, perhaps not unexpectedly, a marked skew towards young, male and upmarket groups.

Chart 1: Viewing of TV Programmes via Internet

Chart 2: Profile of Internet Viewers

The use of the internet to view TV programmes has become steadily more widespread as new services have been launched. Chart 3 plots this growth, among all adults, over the past three years. As well as demonstrating the rise in the number of people that have tried out an internet-based TV service, it also suggests that an increasing number of people are using these services regularly.

Chart 3: Trend in Viewing of TV via Internet

Chart 4: Average Weekly Online Viewing Time

To provide a wider context the survey also collected data on how long people had used the internet to view TV programmes. As shown in the table, the average for all adults was 0.15 hours, or 9 minutes, per week. This suggests that, when scaled across the whole population, use of the internet for TV viewing remains small (less than 1%) relative to viewing via standard TV sets, which averaged 24.79 hours per adult per week over the same period.

So far, the use of mobile phones as a means of viewing television has not grown significantly, as shown in Chart 5. 2% of adults claimed to have ever used a mobile phone to watch TV programmes, with only 1% doing so in the past month.

Chart 5: Viewing via Mobile Phone

These results suggest significant growth in the number of viewers accessing TV programmes via the internet, particularly in certain demographic groups (such as young adults). This accounts, however, for a small proportion of overall viewing when looking at the whole population. BARB will continue to track this dynamic area while continuing to assess how measurement solutions could be developed.