Official TAM Ireland/Nielsen figures for 2015 show TV viewing continues to dominate our leisure time with the average Irish adult viewer watching for 3 ½ hours every day – that’s over 24 hours each week. This is 2 minutes more per day than in 2014
Focusing on the commercial broadcasters trading in the Irish market only, they had a very impressive year experiencing increases in both time spent viewing (up 1 minute on last year) and weekly reach which saw increases across all major audiences.
The viewing of live TV i.e. viewing it as it is scheduled accounts for 90% of all viewing time and just 10% is time-shifted. (e.g. recorded on a Personal Video Recorder like Sky+, Virgin Horizon, VCR or DVD).
Housekeepers and those aged over 55 were the heaviest viewers last year with both groups viewing in excess of 4 hours of TV each day. 15-24 yr olds increased their viewing to live TV by an average of 6 minutes per day.
59% of all TV homes in Ireland now have a PVR (e.g. Sky+ or Virgin + box), the increased choice and flexibility that this provides is making TV viewing more popular than ever before.
The highest rating show of 2015 was The Late Late Toy Show and the 2nd highest was World Cup Rugby match of Ireland V France
Sport was a big winner this year accounting for 12 of the top 20 programmes of the year. Home produced programmes continued to dominate the top of the ratings chart across all channels.
TAM Ireland separately commissioned Ipsos MRBI to carry out a study of viewing on other devices in March 2015. According to the survey we claim that 83% of our viewing time is spent viewing on a TV set and 17% viewing on other devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. This has remained relatively stable over the 3 years that this study has been undertaken. This study will be repeated in early 2016.
The very strong viewing figures for 2015 underpin these findings demonstrating again that rather than cannibalising TV viewing figures these other viewing devices are simply adding to the total time spent viewing.
Jill McGrath CEO of TAM Ireland commented that “It’s fantastic to see the strength that Television continues to have in grabbing the nation’s attention. It seems that the more choice consumers have on TV the more they watch. TV dominates as a medium and is the driver of so many conversations on social media it truly is the super medium.”
The top 20 programmes for 2015 were as follows:
