Growing Trend of Broadcast to OTT Delivery: Insights from iPlayer

IBC is just around the corner, which means it’s time for my annual exercise in asking the BBC how the transition from broadcast to OTT delivery is going. This is something I’ve been doing since 2019 as I was curious to see how it progresses and given the BBC ‘unique’ model of funding it’s a good indicator of how consumers want services to behave ( once you take away paying for it). The data this year seems to show the trend continuing in a ‘linear’ fashion with usage growing year on year. This corresponds to OFCOM data which suggested that iPlayer was 14% of all viewing in Jan 2024, growing to 18% by mid year.

The device trends show most the growth is in the smart TV segment- I suspect it’s nearly impossible to buy a TV in the UK without iPlayer ‘built in’ making it the default device to access iPlayer. In parallel, newer TVs are starting to let uses set them up as OTT only (e.g Freely or newer Samsungs which are happy being IP only).

So what does this mean - here we see a major public sector broadcaster, slowing but surely, moving off broadcast. The recent OFCOM consultation on if/when to turn off/reduce DVB-T is the logical conclusion to this trend. Separately I can see PayTV/Cable operators performing a similar transition - in their case motivated by cost savings from moving to a pure IP network (which they need to build anyhow for the OTT TV services and general internet usage).

I’m at IBC, as usual, on the NAGRA stand - so feel free to pop by and say hello if you’d like to discuss these trends and what TV services can do about them!