By Barry Flynn, Consulting Editor The first edition of the UK Television Landscape report from TV audience research firm BARB, which covers the last quarter of 2015, calls into question two commonly-held beliefs about how television is changing: first, that take-up of SVOD is at the expense of traditional TV; and second, that the increasing number of non-TV households is down to â€˜online pioneersâ€™ watching TV on PCs or laptops. The new research is taken from BARBâ€™s Establishment Survey, in which 53,000 people are interviewed to ensure that its panel of over 5,100 homes remains representative of the UK population. On the first point, BARBâ€™s data records that 24% of UK households subscribed to Netflix, Amazon Video or Skyâ€™s Now TV in Q4 2015, compared to 14% in Q1 2014, an increase of more than 70% over the two-year period. But there is a clear bias in take-up towards homes that already have pay-TV, BARB observes. â€œNetflix and Amazon Video homes are significantly more likely to be cable or Sky subscription homes than average,â€ says BARB, adding that penetration in cable and YouView homes is particularly high because of the deals Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk have made to integrate Netflix into their offers: â€œ30% of cable homes and 31% of YouView homes take Netflix compared to 13% of terrestrial only-households,â€ says BARB. The audience research firm goes on to point out that the overlap between SVOD services and â€œvery similar traditional servicesâ€ is particularly noticeable when looking at SVOD penetration in pay-TV homes that take Sky Movies â€“ â€œa service which is usually thought of as a direct competitor to Netflix and Amazon Video.â€ Here, SVOD penetration increases from 35% in cable homes to 43% within cable homes that already take the premium movies service, and from 25% to 30% in Sky homes. â€œThe picture is clear,â€ concludes BARB. â€œSVOD homes are not swapping out their traditional TV for SVOD, they are using SVOD services to get even more of what they already have.â€ BARB also found that over half (55%) of SVOD households are large ones, with three or more occupants, compared to over a third (35%) for the population as a whole. They also skew younger, with 40% of occupants aged 24 or under, compared to 30% in the population at large. However, the data â€œdoes not support the commonly expressed view that an entire generation of young people has more or less abandoned traditional TV in favour of binge-viewing on Netflix or Amazon Video,â€ says BARB. While SVOD take-up is highest among children and young adults, â€œit is still the case that less than 50% of 16-24 year-olds has access to an SVOD service. [â€¦] The reality is that only three in ten children live in a household that subscribes to [Netflix].â€ Meanwhile, the BARB report also looked at the increasing number of UK homes that do not own a TV set: 1.3m in Q4 2015, according to its research, amounting to 4.7% of UK households. BARB notes that one theory about such households is that they are made up of â€œonline pioneers who are keen on TV but prefer to use computer devices to access it.â€ However, it argues, the figures suggest that homes without TVs are â€œgenerally less interested in the TV experience: they have a lower level of broadband take-up, and they are significantly less likely to have SVOD or own a tablet or a PC.â€ The picture that is emerging is that they are made up of younger people just setting up home, â€œwho have either not got round to buying a TV, or perhaps donâ€™t find it easy to afford oneâ€ â€“ BARB finds such households skew towards DE and away from ABC1 social grades. Nevertheless, BARB notes that â€œthe number of people who do not feel it is essential to have a TV seems to be growing.â€ This is borne out by research from Ampere Analysis (quoted in an earlier Videonet report), who found that nearly half of US homes across three age groups (18-24, 25-34 and 35-44) believe their household may not need broadcast TV within five years. In Europe nearly 30% of homes across the same three age-groups think the same. BARB says this trend is something it will continue to monitor and report upon, but comments that it is â€œfar too earlyâ€ to draw any conclusions when the percentage of non-TV homes in the UK currently stands at around 5%.
TV subscriptions in the Virgin Media , such as those offered by TalkTalk and the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board , have risen by 70% in the past two years , according to a new report from Sky . The UK Television â€œonline report revealed that 24% of households signed up for pay-TV deals, which they used to supplement traditional television output, rather than replace it. The report also scotched the myth that a rise in the number of non-TV households - up to 1.3m in Q4 the past two years - and said it was not “online pioneers” watching on tablets or mobiles, but rather people who were “interested in the TV experience.”