Anyone worried about spending slightly too many hours bingeing on Netflix or normal TV during the pandemic need not be concerned: it appears that everyone in Britain did.
Figures released by the broadcasting watchdog showed that adults spent a third of their waking hours watching TV and online video content last year at an average of five hours and 40 minutes a day.
That figure is 47 minutes more than the average amount in 2019 and equates to about 2,000 hours over the course of last year, Ofcom said.
The change was mainly driven by people spending almost twice as much time watching streaming services as in 2019, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, rising to 65 minutes a day.
Ofcom said the figures showed that TV and online video had “proved an important antidote to lockdown life”. It added that during the winter lockdown last year Netflix subscribers in the UK spent almost an hour a day watching comedy — nearly twice as much as a year earlier — with the US version of The Office and the US sitcom The Big Bang Theory doing well.
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The pandemic appears to have been a boon for streaming services, with subscriptions in Britain climbing by more than 50 per cent year on year to reach 31 million people, up from 20 million in 2019. This meant that by September 60 per cent of homes in Britain were subscribed to a streaming service, up from 49 per cent last year.
Netflix dominated among video streaming providers, with 52 per cent of British households having a subscription. This meant that for the first time Netflix’s customer base in Britain exceeds that of pay-TV providers such as Sky, Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk, which remains at 48 per cent.
Ofcom added that 29 of the top 30 most watched titles on subscription services going into the first three months of this year were on Netflix, with the period drama Bridgerton taking the top spot, watched in 8.2 million homes in Britain.
Boris Johnson’s statement about the easing of lockdown in England on May 10 last year was the most watched programme on broadcast TV with an average audience of 19 million. A BBC1 news special on March 23 came in at No 2 with 14.6 million. The season six finale of Line of Duty was the third most watched with 16 million viewers.
The average time that adults spent viewing broadcast TV last year was three hours and 12 minutes overall. Although this was nine minutes more than in 2019, and reversed the declining trend of the past decade, the rise was driven by people above 45. Those under this age watched less broadcast TV than in 2019, at an average of one hour 40 minutes. Ofcom said that people aged between 16 and 24 spent only 77 minutes per day of their average viewing time on broadcast TV last year, but 85 minutes a day on streaming services and 78 minutes on YouTube.
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Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom’s group director of strategy and research, said: “The challenge for the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney will be to ensure a healthy pipeline of content and keep customers signed up.”
