British TV viewers watched more content after its linear broadcast than ever before in 2018 according to new research from BARB.
In its 2019 edition of The Viewing Report, BARB found that in 2018 15.2 per cent of viewers watched content in the seven days after its linear broadcast, an increase of 0.9 per cent on the previous year, and the biggest increase in four years.
Drama is the most popular genre timeshifted genre at 31 per cent, with the majority of timeshifted viewers being adults aged 25-34.
The report also found that 12.3 million homes in the UK had at least one of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Now TV in Q4 2018 – a year-on-year increase of 20 per cent. Netflix is the main driver of this increase, having added 2.2 million homes compared to Q4 2017. The report also found the number of homes with two or more services rose by 32 per cent from 3.26 million to 4.3 million in the past year.
In his introduction to the report, BARB chief executive Justin Sampson revealed the organisation is looking to address the rise of unidentified viewing on the TV set. “BARB hasn’t yet cracked how to report viewing to services that don’t want to be measured; we’re getting closer and hope to have more news soon,” he said.
As always, BARB also revealed the top tens of 2018:
