TV Market Data

Communications Market Report 2009

Communications industry revenue (based on elements monitored by Ofcom) increased by 0.2% to £51.8bn in 2008, with television (in particular pay-TV subscriptions) the main driver of growth. Telecoms revenue remained flat, while radio revenues fell in 2008.

Total television industry revenue grew by 1.3% to reach £11.2bn in 2008. This was largely driven by subscription revenue, which increased by 5.7% in 2008 to reach £4.32bn. Pay-TV providers increased subscriber numbers while products like multiroom and high-definition television also gained in popularity (pages 69 and 82).

Total TV net advertising revenue was £3.47bn in 2008, down 3% year on year, as the gains in multichannel revenue, up 9.3% to nearly £1.3bn, helped to offset the reductions on the mainstream channels (page 69).

Net advertising revenue for ITV1, GMTV1, Channel 4 and Five decreased 8% year on year to £2.1bn. The four main commercial PSBs undertook several cost-cutting measures as they felt the impact of the recession and the wider structural challenges facing free-to-air broadcasting (page 84).

Broadcasters’ total spend on television output passed the £5bn mark, fuelled mostly by increased investment in Sport and Film channels (driven by higher costs for rights acquisitions) and BBC One (page 88).

The five main PSB channels broadcast 33,165 hours of first-run originated programming in 2008, down by 3% on 2007 and by 5.6% (1,845 hours) since 2003. The five PSB channels also invested less in first-run originations. In 2008 prices, they spent £2.6bn in 2008, down by 2.9% year on year (page 90).

UK television channels broadcast nearly 2.5 million hours of programming in 2008. Of these, almost 1.5 million hours were broadcast by the PSB channels and key multichannel genres, of which 9% (133k hours) were first-run originations (page 89).

The five main PSB channels (BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five) attracted a viewing share of 60.8% in all homes during 2008, down by 2.7 percentage points year on year (page 130).

Digital television penetration in the UK reached 89.2% at the end of Q1 2009, an increase of 2.1 percentage points year on year. This meant that around 22.8 million homes received digital television on their main set at the end of March 2009 (pages 73 and 121).

Digital switchover is now well under way and Exeter in the West Country became the UK’s first ‘digital city’ in May 2009. Analogue switchover in the first region of the Scottish Borders was completed in November 2008 (page 74).

High-definition television gained traction over the past 12 months, as new HD channels launched and more platforms developed their HD propositions. By the end of the first quarter of 2009, 2.3 million homes (9%) had reception equipment capable of accessing linear or on-demand HD content. Thirty-three per cent of UK homes claimed to have HD-ready television sets at the end of 2008, according to our research (page 76).

A total of 77 television channel licences were issued by Ofcom in 2008, significantly down from the 143 issued during 2007. Overseas licences formed an increasingly large proportion of the new licences (page 79). There were 495 channels broadcasting in the UK at the end of 2008, up from 470 a year earlier.

OFCOM's Communications Market Report 2009