Insight

With the BAFTAs and Oscars in the can for another year, it’s a good moment to look at what film means to UK television viewers.

This year’s awards were another demonstration of the increasing influence of SVOD services on the film and television landscape. Netflix’s The Power of the Dog was awarded Best Film at the BAFTAs while CODA, from Apple TV+, scooped the equivalent prize at the Oscars.

Thanks to our new data on streaming services, we can see the audience that The Power of the Dog has achieved on Netflix since it was released on December 5th 2021 after a limited theatrical release. With 2m viewers, it has attracted a much lower audience than Don’t Look Up (10.5m) — another Netflix release that was nominated in multiple awards categories, but didn’t bring home a gong.

Despite this impressive audience, Don’t Look Up doesn’t quite make it to the top of the pile when we look at the most-watched movies from December 2021 through to March 2022. That prize goes to Encanto, Disney’s musical fantasy movie.

Table 1: Aggregated average audience and reach for films on broadcaster and SVOD services
Source: Barb 01/12/21 – 31/03/22. All data are As viewed. Audiences to films that have been broadcast may be accumulated from multiple broadcasts.

The table above shows the most-watched films on linear channels and SVOD services from December 2021 – March 2022. These are aggregated average audiences, meaning someone watching one film multiple times is counted more than once; this is also true for the consolidated 7-day average audiences our industry has relied on for many years. In most cases this isn’t significant, but as anyone with children will attest, they can watch a favourite film or show repeatedly.

This is one reason Encanto tops the pile with an impressive aggregated audience of 26.1m. That said, the reach figure for this film — 13.8m over the four months — would still make it the most-viewed film. Looking at this combination of aggregated average audience and reach provides insight into a movie’s breadth of appeal, and also the likelihood for repeat viewing.

Comparing reach and aggregated average audience in the table above also reveals differences in the way broadcast and SVOD movies are watched by audiences. There is only one broadcast movie with reach lower than the aggregated average audience – Love Actually. This may be a reflection of the enduring importance of a linear broadcast in that, in spite of many options to catch-up after, or view ahead of broadcast, for some missing the broadcast means missing the movie altogether.

In this table, only eight of the top 20 films are from broadcasters, and looking at the release dates of those films, we can see that newer films take some time to reach broadcast channels. Historically this has always been the case, as studios’ release strategies dictated that films could often take years to reach free-to-air broadcast channels after cinema release. With SVOD services commissioning and producing films of their own, this model is changing. Can we understand then how important films are to the SVOD services?

We can get an idea by looking at the genre classification for all programming on these services. The genres film or TV film made up 11.5% of viewing on broadcast channels from December 2021 to March 2022 — this is perhaps bigger than you might have expected. Yet we can see that movies are much more important to the SVOD services. During the same period just under half of viewing to Disney+ was to movies, while around one-fifth of viewing to Amazon and Netflix was to movies.

Chart 2: Contribution of film genre to time with each service
Source: Barb December 1st 2021 – March 31st 2022. Film includes TV film.

Given Disney’s extensive back catalogue of world-famous films, this proportion is hardly surprising for Disney+. The large share taken by film on Netflix and Amazon is, in part, a result of their focus on particular genres; more than 80% of the content on each service is drama, entertainment or film. That figure for broadcasters is just over 50%. Public service broadcasters are required to show other types of programming, such as news and weather (8% of viewing), that the SVOD services don’t cover.

Let’s go back to Coda, the award-winning movie on Apple TV+. We don’t currently monitor Apple TV+ at a programme level, yet we can see the daily reach of the service as a whole. The following chart does not show an appreciable increase in daily reach on Apple TV+ in the immediate aftermath of the recent award ceremonies. Although, there is an increase on the days between the two ceremonies, possibly as a result of viewers checking out the film that won two BAFTAs.

Chart: Daily reach to Apple TV+
Source: Barb 01/02/22 – 30/03/22. Apple TV+ is currently a non-Barb-subscribing service meaning reach figures are only available for Section 9 licence holders.

Given the current distribution strategies of the SVOD services, it seems unlikely films like CODA will be aired on broadcast channels soon, if indeed ever. The signs are though that larger audiences await if they were to be shown this way. The evidence for this is the sizeable audiences for older movies such as Paddington (3.5m on BBC1), Paddington 2 (4.8m on BBC1) and Love Actually (4.4m on ITV2).

Or is that just the allure of Hugh Grant?

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb