SVOD enters the majority of UK homes as drama becomes defining genre of new video landscape
Details
Joseph O'Halloran
| 12 May 2020

The latest version of The Viewing Report, the annual exploration of the UK’s viewing habits from measurement firm BARB, has revealed that subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) has reached a tipping point within the UK, arriving into the majority of UK households for the first time.

Broadcast of course still dominated and in this sector BBC channels dominated with a 31% share of audience in 2019, followed by ITV’s portfolio mon 23.4%. the Channel 4 package claimed 10% and Viacom, owner of the Channel 5 brand, on 9.6%. Pay-TV provider Sky claimed 9.7% of the audience and UKTV 4.4% and Discovery 4.3%.

Yet the survey found that between the fourth quarter of 2015 and the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of homes with a subscription to at least one of Netflix, Amazon and Now TV has more than doubled. Overall, 14.3 million UK households, 50.5%, had one of these SVOD services, an increase of 2.0 million homes (16%), compared with Q4 2018.

Netflix and Amazon saw similar levels of growth in the number of households that subscribe to their services. Amazon’s increase represented a larger year-on-year percentage growth of 35% to 7.1 million homes, compared with Netflix’s 20% increase to 12.4 million homes, due to Amazon’s lower number of subscribers.

The number of homes with access to just one SVOD service is continuing to decline. In Q4 2015, homes that had Netflix as their only service represented almost two-thirds of SVOD households. That figure is now at 45%, but BARB said that it can see that Netflix has not lost those customers, rather these Netflix homes have added other SVOD services.

As of the fourth quarter of 2019, 6.0 million homes had access to two or more services meaning that just over 42% now take more than one service, with Netflix and Amazon the most popular combination, increasing from 9% of SVOD homes in Q4 2015 to almost one in three in Q4 2019.

Looking at popular dramas, BARB’s data revealed that two-thirds of 2019’s top 100 shows in the UK came from drama and that each year this domination grows. BARB noted that drama doesn’t just make an impact in terms of audience volume; it said that by speaking to viewers that it also creates deep and long-lasting memories, providing emotional value, driving conversations.

The drama genre also provided insight into the concept of bingeing. An analysis of pre-broadcast viewing to Sky One’s Manifest found that 92% of viewing of the final episode of Manifest was pre-broadcast. A similar characteristic was found for BBC One’s Gold Digger.

Drama continued to be the genre that saw the most time-shifted viewing, with almost 33% of viewing occurring after a live broadcast in 2019. Once again, adults 25-34 led the way in time-shifted viewing, with a 2.7 percentage point year-on-year increase. Analysis of viewing on non-TV devices showed that tablets are the most popular device after TV sets.