Television in UK Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Television in UK - Research Paper Example People over 65 spend five hours a day watching TV perhaps because certain channels are free for them. Most of the adults between 24 and 65 that spend time on the television, are not actually watching the programs or the ads but are doing some other work simultaneously like talking on the phone or surfing the internet. The three main activities that take up the day include sleeping working and watching TV and men are more likely to watch TV than women. Adults over the age of 16 spend under three hours watching the television and the 24-65 year olds fall under the same category of viewers. The following chart shows that watching television is the most common activity by most people in the UK: According to this, 66% of the adults between 25-64 years of age watch TV regularly, while a higher percentage watches the heritage TV among the 45-64 age groups than those between 25-44 age groups. With the reduction in television viewing, naturally the advertising on television also suffers. With switchover to digital TV all the households will have access to multi-channel and this will affect the viewing behavior. it is expected that over the next decade multi-channel TV viewer ship will increased while the BBC and the traditional channels will decline. It is expected that the position will be thus: UK television advertising is regulated when it comes to minutes per hour and hence the cost of advertising increases. The TV advertising market has two differentiated products - advertising on the traditional commercial channels (Channels 3, 4 and 5) and the multi-channels which includes all other commercial channels. Due to economic conditions and declining audiences, the advertising revenues have declined. There has been a shift from traditional channel viewing to commercial multi-channel viewing which has also impacted the value of TV advertising revenues. The TV has also reduced in its attractiveness as an advertising medium. Because of declining audiences the price of traditional channel advertising has received a boost which means it costs more to deliver to the same audience (PWC, 2006). The advertising budget remains the same but the impacts are fewer. At the same the trend towards watching multi channels is increasing and hence the costs become spread out. The cost of 30 seconds of television advertising now costs just '4.81 per thousand adults and this works out to 29pc cheaper than in 2000 (Mason, 2008). Digital spin-off channels are expected to increase their advertising revenue by ten percent but this will not be able to compensate for the terrestrial channel advertising like the ITYV1, channel 4 and channel 5. The most popular and traditional TV channels are ITV1, Channel 4 and Five and the cost of advertising is the highest for ITV1. Some of the most popular TV channels with the cost of advertising are: * itv1 + GMTV 48.5p * BBC ONE 35p * Channel 4 18.7p * Sat and cable 16.8p * BBC TWO 12p * five 7.7p * BBC THREE 2.5p * BBC FOUR 1.3p * S4C 0.3p Source: Glen, n.d. The television advertising revenue is expected to fall for all channels and by 6 and 7% for channels