British broadcasters have been pushing their online video distribution strategies for two decades now with increasing commitment, but it estimated that in 2024 only 17% of their viewing on a television set will have been delivered online. That is forecast to rise to half of all viewing by 2040, which is still a way off, suggesting that broadcast delivery will remain significant for some time.
The latest estimates come from Enders Analysis. They forecast a gradual decline in total broadcaster viewing on a television set in the United Kingdom, from around 57 billion hours a year forecast for 2024 to around 51 billion hours in 2040, a decline of around 12%. That suggests that people will still be watching a lot of television in 15 years, despite increased competition from other online video services.
Significantly, the forecast figures suggest that the volume of viewing delivered by internet protocols, and they include cable television viewing in that, will only grow from about 17% of viewing hours in 2024 to around 50% in 2040. The rest, about 25 billion hours a year, will still be delivered by digital terrestrial or satellite television. That might surprise some, given that many have been poised to write the death certificate of digital broadcasting attributable to the inevitable transition to online distribution.
The analysts suggest that the decline in broadcast viewing is slowing, while the growth of online video subscription services will flatten off in 2025 as video sharing services like YouTube and TikTok increase their share of overall viewing.
The company forecasts that broadcasters will have a 52% share of total video viewing by 2030, down from 58% in 2023 and 95% in 2010.
One of the reasons for this is the amount of viewing by those aged over 65, who have far more available time to view and have always been the heaviest viewers of television. In 2024, viewers over 65 will watch an average of just under five and a half hours of broadcaster programming each day. They are still expected to watch over five hours a day in 2030. As the population of older viewers is continuing to increase, the overall amount of broadcaster viewing is only expected to decline slightly.
So, the real problem for broadcasters is that they are catering for an increasingly ageing market, and as they do so their programming is less relevant to younger viewers, who have many more viewing options available to them and relatively less time to spend watching broadcaster programming.