Sky Media released last week (6th April) some important information relating to TV and how our consumption of this media is changing with the Coronavirus lockdown of the UK. Here we will analyse some of these findings and discuss.

Compared to the previous week (week on week viewing) Sky have seen the biggest jump in younger viewers and daytime viewing. Sounds pretty obvious right? What with schools now closed and lots of young people now at home all day then it is to be expected surely? Well not quite. The normal expectation is that this is the online generation with YouTube and social media being the go to places, with streaming of services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. So what could explain this increase in viewing among this age group? Looking at some of the highlights that Sky report, there has been a +25% increase in viewing to the Discovery channels and a +34% increase of Sky On Demand viewing. Could it be that the educational channels are seeing a spike in viewings to subsidise the home schooling/working from home equilibrium? High performances are being delivered in the daytime with the History channel seeing a +49% uplift during the daytime.

Sky Cinema has seen a rise by +34% YoY with the Secret Life of Pets 2 and the Lion King being 1st and 2nd respectively on the demand list (Top Sky Media VoD Programmes (BARB)Sky STB VOD March 2020). Does this mean that family movie night is making a reappearance, or have we re-ignited our Christmas movie spirit? Whilst viewing is up in total, there has been a +27% increase in weekday viewing compared to just a +12% increase for weekend viewing. What’s of note here is that the afternoon daypart has a +15% increase in viewing most notably of Sky News. This coincides with the daily government briefings which the population are tuning into. The lesser increase of the weekend could suggest that the population are switching off from real time media and engaging more with the on demand and movie platforms whether that is through Netflix, Britbox or Sky channels.

This snapshot of one media owners statistics are likely to be fairly representative of other channels including ITV and Channel 4 (however, without that data this is just speculative).Research from Group M suggest that two times more consumers say TV ads create a more positive image of brands than digital formats. With an increasingly captive audience and increased impacts TV might be quite a good medium to consider within your current media plan.

For more information regarding the TV landscape please email Golley Slaters Media Director astevens@golleyslater.co.uk.