love tv, love live, love tech

We know that our online consumption has changed through our use of mobile and tablets. But what effect has this had on our TV watching habits? A new report by TV Licensing lets us in on the latest intel.

by Sam Waterton

Last week, we launched TeleScope 2014, an annual TV industry report from TV Licensing providing an insightful glimpse of nation’s changing TV viewing habits.

It finds that the living room remains, even with the rise of mobile devices, our favourite place to watch ‘must see’ programmes — naturally enough in the company of our friends and family. Not only that, despite access to a range of catch up services like, iPlayer and 4oD, the UK still loves live TV.

So, what does this mean for PR and communications?

One might say we have a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out). On average, we watch around four hours of TV a day, with 90 per cent of all viewing being live. Events such as New Year’s Eve Fireworks (the most watched live programme of 2013), sports events (like Wimbledon) and news form a huge part of our daily chatter, whether that be the office coffee machine, the family dinner table or via a tweet on the way to work.

TeleScope 2014, shows one in three people in the UK (a whopping 20 million) own a tablet device. Our huge selection of second screens has enabled us to become a multi-tasking nation. We’re not just sitting down to passively consume TV, we’re sharing, discussing and pontificating on the programmes and brands we love and hate.

It’s evident our love of social media and live TV is a game changer in how organisations engage with their audiences. Dr Who’s 50th anniversary episode, mentioned in our report as attracting over 10 million live viewers in 2013, also stimulated over 442,692 tweets about the show in just 1 hour. A large proportion of these (61,319 in fact) contained the BBC seeded hashtag of #SaveTheDay.

And, only last month, The Brits became the most tweeted about UK television programme ever, notching up 78,000 tweets per minute. It wasn’t just the star appearances of One Direction and Beyoncé which captured our imagination, viewers were invited to vote for their favourite acts for the first time via Twitter  - generating an incredible 2 million tweets throughout the night. It’s just one example amongst many where additional social media activities and content alongside traditional TV watching, offer real engagement and interaction with brands.

This year, TeleScope takes a particular look at the changing viewing habits of children. Our additional social media content for the report this year includes a suite of three films ‘Behind The Voices’ which celebrates classic children’s characters from TV shows including Noddy, The Wombles and Count Duckula through the actors who voiced them. If you’re still after a nostalgic hit of retro children’s television, we also created a BuzzFeed community post on the 8 puppet duos you’d hang out with in real life.

You can read more about the TeleScope report here.

Sam Waterton is Digital PR Advisor for TV Licensing 

pic via WikiMedia Commons