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Online TV, Video, Movie Content Consumption Nearly Doubles in UK

Over the past year, the numbers of Britons visiting TV, video and movie websites was up 28% (from Sept. ‘06 to Sept ‘07) - while the total UK time spent on those sites was up 91% during the same period, according to (pdf) Nielsen Online.

Also according to Nielsen Online data:

• Nearly 21 million Britons visited a TV, video or movie-related website in September.
• The TV/Video/Movie sector online is now visited by 63% of Britons online, up from 55% in Sept. ‘06 - or a growth of 15%.
• The total time that  Britons spend consuming content from TV/Video/Movie sites almost doubled - increasing 91% from 641 million minutes in Sept. 06 to 1.2 billion minutes in Sept. ‘07.

 

“Britons are displaying an increasingly significant appetite for supplementing their viewing habits online,” said Alex Burmaster, internet analyst, Nielsen Online. “[W]e are starting to see a significant spread of entertainment consumption from the so-called ‘lean-back’ method of TV to the ‘lean-forward’ method of the PC,” Burmaster added.

The most popular TV, video and movie websites:

•  YouTube is the most popular and most engaging TV, video or movie site being visited; its 9.4 million UK visitors spent a combined total of almost half a billion minutes on the site.
•  The top 10 sites contain four major broadcasters, two social-media video sites, two movie-information sites, two sites for general TV content.

“The fact that YouTube is the most popular site in this sector shows the power of social media as an entertainment form - and the threat or opportunity it poses for traditional media players, depending on your point view,” said Burmaster.

“It’s also interesting to note that TV-links.co.uk - the ninth most popular site and, amongst the top 10, second only to YouTube in terms of total audience time - has now been closed after claims it was illegally providing links to download film content and TV shows. Whilst the legality of the site is in question, the appetite that people have for watching this type of content online isn’t.”