Scotland is a nation of television addicts – with viewers north of the Border watching more broadcast TV than anywhere else in the UK, new research suggests.
A report by regulator Ofcom said Scots spent an average of nearly three hours per day in front of a TV set last year – but the amount watched is declining.
Younger audiences – up to the age of 24 – are tuning less frequently and for shorter periods as they switch to video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
BBC audience share in Scotland among public service broadcasters – the BBC, STV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – was the lowest in Britain, according to the Media Nations Scotland Report.
Commenting on the findings, Glenn Preston, Ofcom’s Scotland director, said: ‘We continue to see a decline in broadcast TV viewing, with our 16-24-year-olds in Scotland watching the least broadcast television.
The final episode of BBC One’s hit drama Happy Valley was the most-watched programme in Scotland in 2023
Strictly Come Dancing was the second most-watched programme, attracting 890,000 viewers in Scotland
‘There are generational differences, with over-54s in Scotland watching more on their TV sets than younger viewers, but the amount of TV watched continues to decline in Scotland across all age groups.
‘Scots won’t be surprised that this shift in behaviour is driven by the flexibility, immediacy and choice that video and streaming services, such as TikTok and YouTube, offer.’
According to the report, people in Scotland spent two hours 48 minutes per day watching broadcast TV on the TV set in 2023, the most of any UK nation.
But the amount of TV watched continues to decline in Scotland across all age groups – with live TV viewing down by 13 minutes compared to 2022.
Older people in Scotland watched more broadcast TV on the television set than younger viewers, with over-54s watching the most – at an average of five hours 10 minutes per day.
Younger audiences aged 16-24 are not just watching broadcast TV less frequently, they are also watching for shorter periods, with this age group in Scotland watching only 41 minutes per day, down by 17 per cent since 2022.
Ofcom said this ‘aligns with the general trends for the UK’, where the weekly reach of traditional TV fell by a record amount in the last year.
Fewer than than half of 16-24-year-olds in the UK are now watching broadcast TV in an average week.
Bn comparison, for the UK, this age group are spending on average 1 hour 33 minutes each day watching video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
The final episode of BBC One’s hit drama Happy Valley was the most-watched programme in Scotland in 2023, attracting an average audience of 965,000.
Other programmes in Scotland’s top 10 most-watched included I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! on ITV and the Eurovision Song Contest, on the BBC.
Ofcom’s research also showed that overall, people in Scotland watched on average five hours of video content at home per person per day.
This was higher than the UK average of four hours and 31 minutes per day.
Audiences in Scotland spent 56 minutes a day viewing content on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube – more than audiences in the other UK nations.
In Scotland, audiences watched an average of 42 minutes of subscription or advertising-supported video-on-demand services, at home per day.
Netflix was the most popular streaming service, followed by Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
Some 86 per cent of people aged 15 and over listen to the radio each week.
While this is marginally lower than the UK as a whole (89 per cent), total listening in Scotland increased from 74.2 million to 77.4 million hours.
Television was far more popular among older viewers, with youngsters preferring YouTube and TikTok
Fewer people are tuning in each week, but those who do are listening for longer.
Most of this listening was to commercial radio, which in Scotland was higher than for the UK as a whole.
Local commercial stations, such as Tay FM, Original 106 and Nation Radio Scotland, made up the majority of this listening.
Online listening continues to grow for Scotland, accounting for over a quarter of all radio listening, with smart speakers driving this growth.
Web-based music services (such as Spotify, Apple and Amazon) now have similar levels of weekly reach as music radio among adults in Scotland.
Six in ten adults in Scotland listen to music radio (60 per cent) while 58 per cent listen to an online music service at least once a week.
Podcasts are becoming part of the ‘audio diet’ in Scotland, with one in five (20 per cent) adults in Scotland listening to them once a week in the first quarter of 2024.
BBC One and BBC Two accounted for 25.3 per cent of audience share for public service broadcasters in Scotland, compared to 27.5 per cent for England and 28.1 per cent for Wales. It was 23.5 per cent in Northern Ireland.
