By Rob McLaren, Insight
With each passing year, the UK’s public service broadcasters seem to lose more ground to digital competitors. By monthly reach, YouTube has overtaken ITV and, according to Barb, Netflix is not far behind. Online video and social platforms have usurped broadcast and online news as the nation’s main sources of news. With each quarter, commercial radio’s lead over BBC grows.
As Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report lays bare, broadcasters continue to play a vital role for the British public, but their long-held dominance over the nation’s living room is under threat. Netflix (26%) is now level with the BBC (25%) as viewers’ first-choice when looking for something to watch, and it holds a clear advantage among 25-34s. The average person now watches 19 minutes of YouTube on a TV set each day, more than double the 9 minutes per day recorded in 2022.
Broadcasters retain the ability to court mass appeal. Live sport, big family entertainment and election nights still predominantly play out on the big screen. The BBC remains the service most trusted for impartiality in the country. But as Ofcom’s report shows, consumers are shifting their everyday viewing behaviour towards SVOD, online video and social.
Faced with this potentially existential threat, broadcasters are adapting their strategies. In Q1, the BBC signed a landmark partnership with YouTube to create purpose-built content for the platform, aiming to re-engage younger users. This follows a separate deal agreed in 2024, whereby ITV made available large swathes of its content on YouTube and offered bespoke packages to advertisers.
In each case, the broadcasters’ strategy is clear: create additional revenue streams (through international viewers only, in the case of the licence fee-funded BBC) by monetising content on video-sharing platforms where it is likely to exist regardless. Long-term, each would hope to funnel users back towards in-house channels, such as ITVX or BBC Sounds, by boosting salience among younger audiences. Short-term, each concedes the need to meet viewers where they already are.
The Ofcom report shows signs that this strategy may be having an effect: BVOD viewing grew by 9% year-on-year, even as SVOD largely plateaued. However, this increase was insufficient to offset the continued decline of linear TV. Moreover, by making full episodes available outside of owned platforms, broadcasters risk surrendering control of advertising revenue without comparable gains in reach.
According to data from Enders Analysis for Barb, YouTube adds just 500,000 unique weekly viewers to ITV’s portfolio compared with 30m who exclusively watch on ITV-owned properties, where it possesses far superior ad tech capabilities. This, combined with YouTube’s 45% cut of long-form revenue, makes broadcasters’ shift towards social an inherently risky proposition.
This exposes the paradox: to maintain control of audience viewing behaviours, broadcasters find themselves surrendering more control. New government proposals seek to safeguard broadcasters’ future by giving content from established media companies greater prominence on social media platforms. These plans have already drawn sharp rebuke from independent content creators and will likely face even greater pressure from big tech companies.
What follows is a battle for the ages. More than seven decades on from its origins, the UK’s broadcasting sector faces its greatest threat. Public service broadcasters are fighting back hard by shifting strategies to social. Whether audiences follow will determine if their gamble has paid off.
