If you’ve just about picked yourself up off the floor after the Royal Wedding, then you’ll no doubt be looking forward to the next televisual delight of 2018.
According to the Q1 2018 Thinkbox TV viewing report, the box in the corner still rules the roost, with the average person watching around three-and-a-half hours of TV per day on a TV set. With this in mind, we asked British viewers about their most-anticipated TV events of the coming year in the latest round of our tracking study – The QT.
Unsurprisingly, the upcoming FIFA World Cup is a priority for 49% of men. But with only 11% of women placing it in their top three, it looks like there might be some fights for the remote control.
A similar proportion of women (12%) were looking forward to the latest series of The Handmaid’s Tale on Channel 4, which made its return on May 20th with particularly bleak scenes in the world of Gilead.
At the opposite end of the televisual spectrum, teasers have begun to air for Love Island, ITV’s runaway success, which is in the top three TV events of the year for nearly two-fifths (38%) of 18-24 year-olds. It’s an isolated demographic however – this figure drops to 20% of 25-34s and just 2% of those aged 35 and over. The gender difference is again apparent here, with 36% of women aged 18-24 hotly anticipating the new series compared with only 15% of their male counterparts. There’s no accounting for taste!
Well-oiled classics continue to be popular. A fifth of Brits (20%) can’t wait for the next series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which isn’t due to grace screens until October at the earliest. You just can’t beat watching D-list celebrities eating insects – and it spells good news for ITV in the autumn.
The new series of Strictly Come Dancing is a keenly-awaited TV event too. This is most notable among the older demographic, with 29% of those aged 65 and over looking forward to their sequin fix compared with a mere 3% of under 45s. Long-term rival The X Factor seems to be coming of age, with the cohort most anticipating the new series being those aged 35-44 (18%) and only 7% of 18-24s counting it among their top TV events of 2018.
The age gap is also apparent when it comes to the new season of Call the Midwife, which is barely on the radar of younger generations but eagerly anticipated by a third of those aged 65 and over (32%).
With evidence of so much division in households across Britain, it seems that 2018 could be the year of private screens rather than big family moments.
