TV viewing still dominates evenings

UK consumers are spending more time watching primetime scheduled television, despite the rise of social networking and other digital media, a new report has said.

According to research by the media regulator Ofcom, UK viewers watched an average of three hours and 45 minutes of television every day in 2009, up by around 3% on figures in 2004.

British consumers now spend almost half (45%) of their waking hours watching TV and using their mobiles or other communications devices.

Despite the growing choice of technology and services available, Ofcom found that peaktime evening media use is still driven by people watching scheduled live television.

Demand for TV has also led to a growth of catch-up TV services such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player. Figures for the first quarter of 2010 show that almost a third (31%) of households with internet access watch online catch-up TV, up 8% year-on-year.

Around a quarter (22%) of UK consumers have purchased a HD-ready TV set in the last 12 months, helping HD TV sales pass 24 million. Among those households, 5m have signed up to receive a HD digital TV service either without subscription from Freeview and Freesat, or via pay-TV from Virgin Media or Sky.

Ofcom claimed that the strong demand for HD shows that consumers are "as attached to their TVs as they ever were and are hungry for more channels and better picture quality".

The watchdog said that it also highlights the potential growth of connected TV - which brings together linear TV and internet services - and other technologies such as 3D.

"For the first time we can see just how central media and communications are to our lives - on average we use them for nearly half our waking hours," said Ofcom's partner for strategy and market developments Peter Phillips.

"Increasingly, mobile devices - especially smartphones - are used for multi-media, but live evening TV still remains the main entertainment event of the day."

Ofcom also found that the proportion of timeshifted viewing has more than tripled since 2006, from 1.7% to 5.9%, largely due to the growing use of digital video recorders.

However, the number of TV channels broadcasting in the UK fell in 2009 for the first time since 2004, from 495 to 490. The regulator noted that the collapse of Setanta Sports and its UK channels contributed to this decline.

Last year, UK TV industry revenue also declined for the first time since 2003, down 0.4% to £11.1 billion. Due to the tough economic climate in the recession, net TV advertising revenue also fell by 9.6% to £3.1bn, its biggest decline since 2003.

Ofcom found that weekly radio use reached a record high of 90.6% (46.5m adults) in the first quarter of 2010, up almost 750,000 listeners on the first quarter of 2009.

However, radio listening has actually decreased by 5.3% over the five years to 2009, and by 0.4 per cent year this year. Total listening hours for all BBC Radio stations were down by 1.2% in 2009, but the commercial stations remained stable.