The latest research from TAM Ireland, the TV audience measurement body, shows that Irish people continue to embrace live TV despite the growth PVR ownership.
According to TAM Ireland, Irish adults spent 91% of their viewing time watching live TV in June while 9% watched time-shifted programmes. According to TAM, PVR ownership has risen from 45 in September 2012 to 54% in April 2013. The figures TAM Ireland uses are tracked by Nielsen.
TAM Ireland also points out that this is true not only of the general viewing population, but also younger viewers. “You would expect different behaviour from the 15 – 24 year olds and that they would completely embrace this technology and change the way they view TV. But no, this, often difficult to please age cohort, watched 89.23% of their TV live as broadcast in June this year and just 10.77% was time-shifted – in fact this is slightly more live TV than they watched in June last year when it was 89.03%,” says Jill McGrath of TAM Ireland.
She adds that the TV schedulers are obviously doing their jobs right and placing the right shows at the right time but that is not the only reason why we prefer to watch live TV.” The beauty of live TV is that you can share the experience, it becomes a conversation piece and that, it seems, is what ensures people watch programmes as broadcast,” she says.
“The power of TV to drive conversations used to be limited to the water cooler and dinner table, but it has now spread its net far wider through social media. Television drives conversations – if you’re not watching a programme as it is broadcast you’re missing out on the conversation”.
