{"id":433658,"date":"2026-02-19T06:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/433658\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T06:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:35:08","slug":"over-half-u-k-audiences-watch-youtube-via-tv-set-according-to-barb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/433658\/","title":{"rendered":"Over Half U.K. Audiences Watch YouTube Via TV Set, According to Barb"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOver half of YouTube<\/a>\u2019s U.K. audience watches via a television set, according to the latest viewing habits report from U.K. ratings body Barb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the report, published today, while almost half of YouTube viewing is on smartphones, tablets and laptops, 54% is on a TV set across all demographics. Barb now calls the video platform a \u201csignificant part of the U.K.\u2019s AV ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYouTube is also the fourth most-viewed navigation platform making it, in Barb\u2019s view, as much of a \u201cgateway to content\u201d as EPGs on traditional cable and satellite platforms. According to the report, ITV\u2019s average YouTube reach via a TV set for its content was 4.9 million in 2025. For Sky that figure was 3.4 million and for Channel 4 it was 2.5 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich means that as well as being a place for content creators to start their careers before crossing over to \u201ctraditional\u201d broadcasters or streamers, such as Mr Beast and Mark Rober, TV companies are increasingly looking to the tech company for discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\tBBC Studios is among a number of traditional TV companies who have inked a partnership with YouTube. Last year the production company\u2019s digital SVP Jasmine Dawson took part in a joint Mipcom panel<\/a> with YouTube\u2019s EMEA boss Pedro Pina, in which she extolled the benefits of working with the tech company. \u201cWe\u2019re not sacrificing anything,\u201d she said. \u201cActually it\u2019s incremental. And that is a really powerful conversation to have our distribution partners, whether it\u2019s \u2018Bluey\u2019 with Disney or some of our BBC Earth titles with PBS and other distributors, they understand that this is where the fandom grows, and then it drives incrementality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever YouTube is bested by Netflix when it comes to switch on, meaning where a viewer goes first when they switch on their TV. According to this metric, a third of viewers go to traditional broadcasters, a third to streamers and YouTube combined and a third everywhere else.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf the third who go to the streamers\/YouTube, Netflix leads the way with 14% of the audience going to the \u201cLove is Blind\u201d streamer first compared to YouTube\u2019s 10%.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor 16\u201334-year-olds Netflix is the most popular platform and where 26% of that demographic go upon first switching on the TV. For children aged 4-15 years old 26% head to YouTube first in any viewing session with the TV set the most-used device for watching the platform.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther significant trends show the continued decline of live TV from 60% of all viewing on a TV set in 2022 to 45% in Dec. 2025. Unsurprisingly sport continues to be a big driver of live TV, with the Women\u2019s Euros final, which saw England defeat Spain, draw in a combined average audience of 9.8 million across the BBC and ITV, of which 94% of people watched it live.<\/p>\n

\n\tFamily viewing also continues to pull in large live audiences, who consider it appointment viewing, including the Eurovision Song Contest grand final, \u201cCelebrity Traitors\u201d and even \u201cGogglebox.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn-demand streaming continues to account for a large number of views, amounting to 38% of U.K. viewing in 2025. Curiously, a large proportion of viewing on Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix \u2014 the U.K.\u2019s three biggest streamers \u2013 was library content that had been available for more than 12 months. According to Barb, \u201cBluey\u201d accounted for 4.2% of all TV set viewing of Disney+.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCommentary about television is too often based on a binary premise that ignores a more complex reality,\u201d said Barb CEO Justin Sampson. \u201cBarb\u2019s independent evidence points to a world in which viewing is defined more by adaptation than disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe prognosis is more connected, nuanced and resilient than the clich\u00e9s and partial viewpoints suggest. Live audiences are healthy, children and young people haven\u2019t deserted linear services, and there\u2019s an increasingly symbiotic relationship between all services and platforms in the TV ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over half of YouTube\u2019s U.K. audience watches via a television set, according to the latest viewing habits report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[158401,96,391,56,54,55,132],"class_list":["post-433658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-barb","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}