First came Tiger King, soon followed Normal People, then I May Destroy You, and just like that, Britons spent 40 per cent of their waking hours watching the telly.
At the height of lockdown, the average individual watched around six and a half hours of television per day, almost a third more than the previous month.
According to an Ofcom report, lockdown saw an increase of 12 million subscribers to streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, which Mark Sweney suggests was part of the public hoping to “relieve the boredom of the nationwide lockdown.”
Ofcom’s Media Nation’s 2020 report indicates that some 12 million UK adults subscribed to a new video streaming platform amid the pandemic. Approximately seven million of these already used one subscription service, with three million first time subscribers signing up.
The latest contender to throw its hat into the ring – Disney+, launched just 24 hours after the UK went into lockdown. Current estimates indicate that the platform is readily available in one third of homes, while free services such as BBC iPlayer have declined in popularity, down four per cent.
Richard Broughton, an analyst at Ampere, noted that: “It’s true that it has been almost perfect conditions for all the major streaming services.
“Under lockdown there has been a lack of alternative entertainment options where you couldn’t see friends and cinemas, restaurants, pubs and clubs were closed. And with traditional TV there has been a relatively limited variety of shows, people were rapidly running out of things to watch.”
