Thursday, December 31, 2015

OTT

With headline overnight figures down for all channels over Christmas, it'll be interesting to see if this was the biggest time-shifted festive break in terms of broadcast viewing - or if more and more viewers have migrated to alternatives, and for good.

Around 1 in 5 in the UK (19%) are already using subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and NOW TV. Market researchers estimated another 20% might sign up for Christmas - though some said they'd do it for the minimum period and then quit. Doubtless there were a few British subscribers in the 3 million worldwide who signed up to Amazon Prime in the early weeks of December. Others will have found other ways to get the big telly online, with Google Chromecast and other dongles likely to be in many Christmas stockings.

There's some suggestion that these services are often used just for faster, easier catch-up rather than specially-made programmes - put it down to the UK tv audience's innate conservatism. And this may actually play into the BBC's hands. The latest monthly catch-up figures from BARB, trying to measure across all UK platforms and devices, for the four weeks ending December 13, puts 39 BBC programmes in the Top 50, with All4 on 6 and ITV on 5. TV producers will hope that 2016 is a year that the industry agrees on a common calibration of what success looks like.

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