Insight

As viewers become more accustomed to accessing broadcaster video on-demand (BVOD) services regularly, this has opened up opportunities – episodes can be made available before they are broadcast on linear channels. By working with broadcasters, Barb has developed techniques to measure this pre-broadcast viewing alongside live and post-broadcast viewing up to 28 days after transmission, ensuring that our clients get the full 360° audience view.

The chart above shows an example taken from the BBC series Normal People. All episodes were available on BBC iPlayer once the first episode had aired on BBC One, giving viewers the opportunity to binge-watch and get ahead of the linear transmissions. And this was an option taken up by a large proportion of the audience. By the time the episode 12 finale was broadcast on BBC One on June 1^st 2020, it had been available on iPlayer for 35 days and watched by over 2.8m people. This was more than half the overall total that watched the show across the 64 days that Barb measures.

The appetite for this binge-viewing also differs by age. For Normal People, viewers aged 16-34 were more likely to use iPlayer to get ahead – by the date of the first linear broadcast 72% of the eventual viewers in this age-group had already watched the episode. Looking at the weekly breakdown of the pre-broadcast viewing, the Adults 16-34 percentage is ahead of all Individuals 4+ at every stage, showing the appeal of binge-watching among younger age-groups. With 17% of the Adults 16-34 audience watching episode 12 by day 7 of its availability, this is also an impressive commitment to the series, if they have also watched all prior episodes in that week.

But it’s also clear that the linear broadcast remains an important contributor to the final audience levels. Among all individuals 4+, viewing jumped from 52% of the final total to 90% in the week of the BBC One transmission. So many viewers were happy to not watch ahead and catch the show in its regular slot. Even among adults 16-34 the week of linear broadcast added 14 percentage points to the final viewing total.

The number of programmes that Barb can measure this way has increased significantly during 2020, showing that analysing pre-broadcast viewing will remain an important part of understanding the full 360° audience view in the future. For more information on how Barb measures pre-broadcast programmes, please see our Barb Explained article on this topic.