The results show something fundamental. Television is not dying. But the way viewers access it is changing. Britons are not abandoning video; they are simply less and less accepting the idea that television content must be watched at a precisely defined time on a precisely defined channel.
The average person in the UK spent approximately four hours and 27 minutes a day watching video at home in 2025. Despite the rapid growth of streaming services, YouTube, and other online platforms, content originating from traditional broadcasters still accounted for 53 percent of total viewing time.
This is perhaps the most important starting point of the entire study. Television content remains strong. However, traditional television programming is waning.
Linear TV is declining, but broadcasters don't necessarily lose viewers
In an average week in 2025, 70 percent of the British population watched some content from traditional broadcasters. A year earlier, it was 73 percent, and in 2022, it was 78 percent. However, linear television itself is declining significantly faster. Live broadcasts or classically recorded programs were watched weekly by 54 percent of people, compared to 71 percent in 2022.
In the same period, however, the online services of broadcasters themselves, i.e., BVoD – broadcaster video-on-demand – are growing. Their weekly reach increased from 38 percent of the population in 2022 to 46 percent in 2025. Moreover, the time people spend on these services continues to grow.
This means that viewers don't have to abandon BBC, ITV, or Channel 4. They may simply be abandoning their linear programming.
In other words: the problem with traditional television is not necessarily the loss of brand or content. The problem is that the traditional method of distribution is ceasing to be the default choice for a segment of the audience.
Young people watch less linear TV, but don't abandon video
The biggest difference, of course, is generational.
Young people aged 16 to 24 watch an average of three hours and eight minutes of video per day at home. This is the lowest of all age groups and a decrease of 11 minutes compared to 2024. The largest part of their video time, 44 percent, is made up of video-sharing platforms, primarily YouTube. SVoD and AVoD services account for just under a quarter.
Interestingly, Ofcom also suggests a certain saturation of streaming among younger viewers. This is not a return to traditional television. Their time is simply increasingly competing with social networks, gaming, and other online activities.
This changes the previous perception of competition in the television market. Today, television does not only compete with Netflix. Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, gaming, social networks, and television channels themselves are competing for the same viewer attention.
The hybrid viewer is becoming the new mainstream
The 35 to 54 age group is very interesting. It is among them that Ofcom observes the most significant hybrid behavior.
These viewers combine traditional broadcasting, BVoD, SVoD, AVoD, and video-sharing platforms. Linear television still plays a significant role here, but it is no longer the sole or dominant way of viewing.
This type of user may well be a picture of the future television market.
It's no longer about a person choosing between “television” and “streaming.” Rather, they turn on the screen in the evening and choose content. Sometimes it will be a live broadcast, other times BBC iPlayer, a third time Netflix, and another time YouTube.
The distribution technology ceases to be important to them.
The oldest viewers watch the most video
People aged 75 and over represent a completely different world. In 2025, they watched an average of six hours and 30 minutes of video per day at home. This is even 33 minutes more than in 2022.
Traditional linear television still almost universally dominates here. 91 percent of people over 75 watch it weekly. In the 16–24 age group, it's only 26 percent.
However, the older generation is also among the fastest-growing users of broadcaster's on-demand services today.
In the 65–74 and 75+ age groups, weekly BVoD reach increased by four percentage points year-on-year in 2025. People over 75 already watched BVoD for an average of 26 minutes per day, and this time increased by 32 percent year-on-year.
This is one of the most interesting trends in the entire study.
Streaming is no longer just the domain of the young. Young people are largely saturated, and further growth is increasingly coming from older age groups.
BBC iPlayer shows a new model of television station
This shift is very clearly visible at the BBC.
In 2025, 26 percent of all BBC viewing was on BBC iPlayer.
This shows how the very definition of a television station can change.
Previously, the main product was the linear channel, and the online archive served as a supplement. Today, the situation is gradually reversing. The main product is the brand and its content ecosystem. Linear broadcasting is just one of several distribution channels.
This is even more pronounced for specific genres. For broadcaster drama, 40 percent of viewing in 2025 was on BVoD. For children's content, the proportion of linear and on-demand viewing was practically equal.
Some genres are thus transitioning to the on-demand environment much faster than others.
Drama is ideal for this type of viewing. Sport or breaking news, on the other hand, still benefit from live broadcasting.
YouTube is moving to the big screen
Perhaps the most interesting part of the entire report concerns YouTube.
In 2025, Britons watched YouTube at home for an average of 41 minutes per day. In 2022, it was 33 minutes, a growth of 24 percent. YouTube accounted for approximately 80 percent of all domestic video-sharing platform viewing.
But not only the growth itself is crucial. The devices are changing.
In 2022, YouTube watched via a television accounted for an average of nine minutes per day. In 2025, it was already 19 minutes.
This is an increase of 111 percent.
For people aged 16–34, the change is even more significant. In 2022, they watched YouTube on a TV screen for approximately five minutes a day. Three years later, it was 21 minutes.
The growth is 320 percent.
This is a fundamental insight for the entire television industry.
Young viewers are not abandoning the television set.
They are abandoning traditional television programming.
A child in front of a TV may no longer be watching a TV channel
This is very clearly visible with children.
Children aged 4–15 watch YouTube at home for an average of 61 minutes per day, more than any adult age group. People aged 25–34 watch YouTube for 52 minutes a day, and the 16–24 group for approximately 50 minutes.
Furthermore, for children, 54 percent of domestic YouTube viewing already takes place on a television. In 2022, it was only 35 percent.
The television screen therefore remains extraordinarily powerful.
But its function has changed.
Previously, a child turned on a children's television channel. Today, they can turn on the same screen, open YouTube, and watch a specific creator.
The television is thus changing from a receiver of television broadcasts to a universal audiovisual platform.
YouTube is no longer just a young platform
Another surprising trend is evident among older viewers.
For people aged 55–64, the weekly reach of YouTube increased from 46 percent in 2022 to 52 percent in 2025.
For the 75+ group, it increased from 28 to 33 percent.
Viewing time is also growing.
People aged 55–64 watched YouTube for an average of 23 minutes per day in 2022, and 32 minutes in 2025.
For the 65–74 age group, time increased from 16 to 25 minutes per day, an increase of 56 percent.
YouTube is thus gradually ceasing to be a “young platform” and is becoming a full-fledged mass medium across generations.
Netflix continues to dominate, but streaming is maturing
Similar developments can be observed in subscription streaming services.
In the first quarter of 2026, 70 percent of British households had at least one SVoD service. However, this is only two percentage points more than in the first quarter of 2022.
This means that the massive phase of acquiring new households is probably approaching its ceiling.
Netflix nevertheless remains the dominant service. In 2025, Netflix accounted for an average of 24 minutes per person per day and represented more than half of all SVoD/AVoD viewing in all age groups.
However, the biggest growth again does not come from young people.
According to Ofcom, people aged 55–74 have seen the strongest growth in SVoD viewing in recent years.
Streaming is thus gradually entering its next phase. Instead of chasing new subscribers, price, bundling, and advertising are becoming more important.
Streaming borrows the business model of traditional television
This is particularly evident in advertising tiers.
For Netflix, 43 percent of subscribers used the Standard with Ads tier in the first quarter of 2026, compared to 31 percent in 2024.
For Disney+, the proportion of users with the ad-supported variant also reached 43 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2025.
There is a certain paradox in this.
Streaming was supposed to be an alternative to traditional commercial television. Today, however, major streaming players are increasingly adopting a model in which part of the revenue again comes from advertising.
The difference is primarily technological. Advertising on IP platforms can be targeted, personalized, data-driven, and more measurable.
The future will therefore probably not be based on a simple battle between television and the internet. Rather, it will be a competition between different forms of video distribution that will increasingly overlap.
Linear TV still has one crucial advantage: the moment
Despite all the declines, linear television still has one extraordinarily powerful quality.
It can create a shared moment.
Sports, competition finals, reality shows, breaking news, or major social events still attract huge audiences at the same time.
The show The Celebrity Traitors illustrates this well. For the premiere, live viewing accounted for 23 percent of the total audience. For the finale, it was 35 percent.
The behavior of young viewers was even more interesting. In the 16–34 age group, the share of live viewing increased from eight to 19 percent, and same-day catch-up from 22 to 60 percent.
This shows that young viewers are not fundamentally against live television broadcasting.
They just need a reason to watch right now.
If there is a social debate, tension, the possibility of a spoiler, or a feeling that something important is happening around the show, the live television moment still works.
Sport remains one of the last mass media
This is even more pronounced in sports.
Ofcom reports that England's matches at the 2026 World Cup reached extraordinary peaks. ITV reported a peak of around 18 million viewers for the quarter-finals, and the BBC up to around 24 million for the semi-finals.
In an era of an extremely fragmented media market, these are enormous figures.
Sport therefore remains one of the strongest assets of television companies. Not necessarily because it has to be distributed by traditional terrestrial broadcasting, but because it creates a simultaneous mass audience.
The ability to gather millions of people at the same time will likely be one of the main values of the linear television environment in the future.
Prime time has not disappeared. It has just split across multiple platforms
Interestingly, technological change has not eliminated the traditional evening peak either.
Live television broadcasting in the UK is still significantly concentrated in the evening hours. Online services have a more spread-out usage throughout the day, but they also show significant evening peaks.
This means that prime time has not disappeared.
It just no longer belongs to a few television stations.
Today, linear television, Netflix, YouTube, gaming, and social media compete for the same evening viewer time.
Humans have changed technologically much more than biologically. They work during the day, and in the evening, they have time for entertainment. Only the number of services competing for their attention has dramatically increased.
The future battle will not just be about channels. It will be about the home screen
A very important part of the entire change is connected TV.
In the first quarter of 2026, 72 percent of British households already had a television with a direct internet connection.
This changes the basic television logic.
Previously, the path was simple:
TV – tuner – list of channels.
Today, it increasingly looks like this:
TV – operating system – home screen – recommendations – applications – content.
And this is where the future winner may be decided.
Whoever controls the TV's home screen can influence what the viewer sees first, which service they open, how easily they find a linear channel, and what the algorithm recommends to them.
Ofcom points out that TV manufacturers themselves are already building their own video services funded by targeted advertising.
The TV manufacturer may therefore no longer be just a hardware manufacturer.
They can become a media gatekeeper.
Traditional television still has one extraordinarily valuable commodity: trust
Despite all technological changes, traditional television remains strong in an area that cannot be simply bought or technologically programmed.
In trust.
While online sources are increasingly dominating in terms of news availability, traditional television news achieves significantly higher trustworthiness ratings.
65 percent of broadcast TV users consider it highly trustworthy. For social networks and video-sharing platforms, this is only 39 percent.
The differences were even more pronounced during the British elections.
BBC TV News achieved a trustworthiness of 68 percent among its viewers, ITV News 67 percent, and Sky News 71 percent.
Social media only 32 percent.
This can be increasingly valuable in an era of information overload and generative AI.
Traditional broadcasters may be losing some of their distribution monopoly, but they can still hold trustworthiness, professional curation, and brand strength.
The television of the future will not be a channel. It will be an ecosystem
Ofcom's report therefore does not present a picture of dying television.
It presents a picture of television breaking down into several distribution layers and reassembling around brand and content.
Linear broadcasting will still be important for sports, news, major social events, and content that gains value by being watched simultaneously by people.
On-demand will increasingly take over drama, children's programming, and catalog content.
YouTube will continue to penetrate large TV screens and also age with its audience.
Connected TV will combine all these worlds into a single user interface.
And the viewer themselves will increasingly care less whether the content came via traditional broadcasting, IP streaming, or a video platform.
This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the entire development.
Television broadcasting will likely be less important than in the past. But the television screen may be more important than ever before.
And the winner may not be the one with the strongest linear channel or the biggest streaming service.
The winner could be the one who can combine content, brand, live broadcasting, on-demand, data, personalization, and distribution into one simple ecosystem, where the viewer no longer has to think about whether they are watching “television” or “the internet.”