A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
On another, such linear viewing still
accounted for 85% of long-form audiovisual
viewing in 2014. 88 But even using the latter
methodology, on-demand viewing (which
includes catch-up services but not timeshifted
viewing) is growing rapidly – from
2% in 2010 to 6% in 2014 – with internetconnected
‘smart’ TV sets and tablets driving
growth. 89 Similarly, even where the precise
figures differ, the trend nevertheless remains
the same: while Deloitte’s Media Consumer
states that live TV viewing declined from 225
minutes a day in 2010 to 193 minutes in 2014,
Thinkbox – using the same BARB source data
– shows a slower decline, from 242 minutes to
221 minutes. 90 The key point is that both show
that audiences are turning away not from
television per se but from linear viewing and
towards multi-platform consumption.
This is a widespread trend. Some 57% of
adults surveyed in the second half of 2014
said they had accessed at least one ondemand
service in the past 12 months, up
from 27% in the first half of 2010. 91 The most
popular service was the BBC iPlayer, used
by 31% of people in 2014. 92 BBC figures show
that requests for television programmes
through the iPlayer have quadrupled from 722
million in 2009 to 2.87 billion in 2015. 93
Alongside the catch-up services are the ‘overthe-top’
subscription services. Dominating
this new space are the two US companies
Netflix and Amazon, which now have
significant ambitions in content production
as well as distribution. The rapid success
that Netflix in particular has enjoyed since
it launched in the UK in 2012 is remarkable.
It had 5.2 million subscribers – some 22% of
households – by the end of 2015, up from
2.8 million a year earlier. 94 Amazon Prime
Instant Video (rebranded from Lovefilm)
had 1.2 million, with Sky’s Now TV signing up
523,000 – more than double what it had a
year before. 95
But it is not just Netflix and Amazon
driving the growth in on-demand viewing.
Audiovisual material is now available from
myriad sources. Vloggers like PewDiePie with
43 million subscribers and Zoella with more
than 10 million subscribers in the UK alone
are evidence of the huge appetite for content
produced a very long way from the studios
of the public service television broadcasters.
Newspaper websites are now able to
produce video, and cultural institutions can
also use the internet to film plays, events or
exhibitions. Universities and other institutes of
learning make lectures and seminars available
online. New entrants in news provision are
making a mark – the Vice website targeting
a youth demographic, for example, has a
digital audience of more than 5 million in the
UK. 96 These efforts may not always look like
high-quality broadcasting output (though
that would be hard to argue in the case of
Vice), but they are competing for the time
and attention of TV viewers and, according
to short-form video specialists Maker Studios,
are drastically expanding the very concept
of ‘content’ such that “consumption can now
range from a 6-second Vine to a 10-season
Netflix binge marathon.” 97
88
Ibid., p.18.
89
Ibid.
90
Deloitte, Media Consumer 2015: The Signal and the Noise, 2015, p. 4; Thinkbox, A Year in TV, Annual Review 2015, p. 8.
91
Ofcom, CMR 2015, p. 52.
92
Ibid., p. 53.
93
BBC, BBC iPlayer Monthly Performance Pack, January 2016, figures extrapolated from slide 4.
94
Ampere Analysis, Netflix – the UK and beyond, April 2016.
95
Ofcom, CMR 2015, p. 54.
96
Ofcom, CMR 2015, p. 373.
97
Maker Studios, The Shift Report: The Short-Form Revolution, 2015.
43