The apples and pears of tv viewing statistics have been on show again, with a piece by the learned Jake Kanter in Deadline. He noticed that, according to Barb monthly reach figures, Netflix audience reach overtook BBC1 in September, October, and November 2024. The BBC told him these figures were “meaningless”; it was wrong to compare the entirety of Netflix with a single channel, and the BBC portfolio of tv channels and iPlayer had double the numbers of viewers of Netflix.
I'm not sure about 'double'; BARB's monthly summary for December puts the BBC portfolio reach at 52.7m, and Netflix at 46.4m. These are based on 'three minutes' consecutive viewing in a month; a rather narrow measure, given how much trouble people have navigating around both the Netflix and iPlayer interfaces. The BBC Annual Report in July 2024 used a 15-minute window. "BBC television and iPlayer viewing had a 61% weekly reach across the population aged over 4 years, based on viewing at least 15 minutes a week on any device."
On one measure, average daily viewing time, Netflix recorded 26 minutes in December, whereas the BBC portfolio scored 53 minutes - which looks closer to double.
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