Supply Consumers welcome different approaches to navigating, accessing and paying for TV content.
- Lack of consumer accessibility to TV and film fuelling piracy
- Major technology and internet brands expected to threaten the role of TV giants
British TV and film viewers are hungry for change to the traditional TV status quo, frustrated by a lack of accessibility to content, according to a UK-wide survey exploring changing consumer attitudes and behaviours to TV and video. The survey was conducted by Red Bee Media, one of the world’s leading media management companies, and is a part of the company’s Tomorrow Calling programme, which aims to build a picture of the media world in 2020, its technological possibilities and market dynamics, through a series of think tanks, quantitative and qualitative research, one-to-one interviews, live panel debates and white papers.
Key findings:
- While the majority of UK consumers expect to watch the same or more live TV in the future, an overwhelming three quarters (74%) claim that they can’t find anything to watch on live TV on a weekly basis, as a result of confusion caused by the continued proliferation of content, platforms and devices.
- 71% want the freedom to choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it.
- 45% want access to all back episodes of their favourite programmes.
- 39% want catch up to be available for longer, such as six months.
- 34% are interested in having multi-room wireless access to content on any screen (rising to 42% among 16-24 year-olds).
- 33% want the whole live TV schedule available on catch up.
- More than a fifth (21%) are frustrated when they can’t access a UK programme while abroad.
- More than half of UK consumers think that content should be released at the same time all over the world (57% for films, 56% for TV).
- In fact, 46% of respondents thought that illegal downloads would be greatly reduced if it was possible to pay to watch new TV series from other countries without having to wait for a UK release date.
- UK consumers are clearly prepared to pay for content; they just want more control over what they are buying. 63% think they will spend the same on TV in the future, and 20% think they’ll spend more.
- Today’s pay TV platform providers may face significant competition from OTT providers:nearly a third (31%) of consumers would be interested in new content packages via internet-connected TV, if they could choose only to receive their favourite channels, without having to pay for other channels that they don’t watch.
- A third (33%) of pay TV subscribers in the UK would consider downgrading or cancelling their subscriptions if there was a cheaper solution to receiving movies; another 33% would do the same if they could watch TV without advertising.
- Channel brands will continue to play an important role. However, a remarkable 39% of UK consumers think that there may be some technology and film brands that can do a BETTER job than existing TV channels.