Insight

January. The start of a new year is a traditional time to plan for the year ahead, but also to take stock of the previous year and celebrate its successes. Janus, the Roman God for whom the month is named, has two faces, one to look backward and one to look forward – so let’s take a leaf out of his book and do just that.

Barb expanded our industry’s understanding of what people watch at the end of 2021, as we added viewing of S/AVOD and video-sharing services alongside the measurement of linear broadcasters. 2022 is the first full calendar year when all these services have been measured, so we can see how people have been watching and show a full range of the most popular content in the last 12 months.

Chart 1: Total Identified Viewing in 2022

Total Identified Viewing is made up of three components: total broadcaster, total S/AVOD and total video-sharing viewing. With nearly four hours of total identified viewing per day by the average UK viewer, we can see that while the broadcaster sector makes up the largest portion of this, the newer entrants to the market are also commanding significant viewing.

The other dimension here is device type. “Lean back” viewing experiences on broadcaster and S/AVOD services are still mostly on TV sets. By contrast, the bulk of viewing on video-sharing platforms is on non-TV devices.

Now we can delve into the content watched in 2022, so let’s begin with the year’s most popular SVOD programmes.

Table 1: Most-watched SVOD titles of 2022
Source: Barb 1st January – 31st December 2022. One entry per series, data are for the most-watched episode in a series only. Viewing is for first 7 days of content availability.

Coming in at the end of the year, Glass Onion’s release just prior to Christmas captured enough viewing over the festive period to make it the most-viewed title on all the SVOD services in 2022. Including Glass Onion, films take up seven slots of the Top 20. Stranger Things’ viewing figures continued strongly and introduced a whole new generation to Kate Bush. Meanwhile, a significant number of people also took the chance to return to Middle Earth with Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power and the Star Wars franchise for Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.

However, this is only one section of the viewing that Barb measures, so let’s see what happens when we add the programming from linear broadcasters into the mix.

Table 2: Most-watched titles across all channels and services in 2022
*Audience aggregated across channels for funeral service (11:00-12:06)
Source: Barb 1st January – 31st December 2022. One entry per series, data are for the most-watched episode in a series only. Broadcaster data combine linear and VOD channel audience for first 7 days.

When we add in the viewing for the linear broadcasters and their VOD services, the picture changes. Broadcaster content still gets most of the viewing and the highest ratings.

“Can’t miss” live events were a key driver for audiences to the biggest shows of 2022. Live football matches at the Men’s World Cup and the Women’s Euros attracted large numbers of viewers ready to experience the lows and, memorably in July (for England at least), the highs in real time alongside others around the country. Eurovision, The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Happy New Year Live! and the opening or final episodes of the likes of The Great British Bake Off, I’m A Celebrity and Strictly Come Dancing also fit this bill. And, of course, viewers also want to experience big news events with the rest of the nation too, with The Queen’s Funeral Service, broadcast on over 50 channels, the most watched TV programme of the year by some distance.

We now have a wealth of insight into viewing behaviour, but we aren’t standing still. 2023 will be a year in which we continue to develop the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch. Later this quarter, we will be publishing the findings of our industry consultation on TV-like content. We also continue to develop reporting capabilities within our service to bring ever more insight into what people watch.

Looking back, it was an exciting 2022, with lots of great content watched across the many channels and services that Barb reports. We’re looking forward to a 2023 that promises to be just as exciting.

Matt Laycock, Audiences Director, Barb