When television was born, a century ago, it transformed the way people got news, entertained themselves and passed the time. In a word, TV changed our lives. Today, the world of television has been transformed – especially thanks to innovative streaming services.

Now, everything is accessible anytime, everywhere. Read it in Italian. 

Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera notes that the key factor in understand television viewing today is not how much time is spent watching but rather on which platforms.

56% of millennials spend time online looking for specific video content. When doing this, they’re not interested in following specific channels or show schedules, but in watching online videos including those across a variety of platforms including new streaming services by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Capitalising on this behaviour, YouTube has announced it’s launching original programming featuring well-known celebrities (as reported by Business Insider). A number of mobile companies have also started their own TV channels – an impressive endeavour as they include the data used to watch these channels (“all the data traffic is included”) in their tariffs.

Now time for some stats that demonstrate the increasing popularity of streaming services which demonstrate the change in TV around the world.

First, the UK. Raconteur reports that the Netflix UK market had 6 million users in 2016, doubling their viewer figure in 2014, meaning it added 3 million users in two years! Amazon achieved an impressive increase to 2.5 million in 2016, when they started with 1.5 million two years before.

Claire Enders, ad and media analyst at Enders Analysis reveals that the 2012 Olympic games were the UK’s most viewed TV programming of recent years. She notes that, although traditional TV viewing has decreased, it won’t die soon. Rob Hodgkinson, Chief Operating Officer of TV Player, one of the UK’s major livestreaming TV platforms, with over a million users per month, says consumers are moving to the fourth generation of TV – that’s internet TV and OTT (over the top services) – but are still connected to traditional TV. In 2025, he believes that 80% of users will still watch traditional TV.

When it comes to the US, Emarketer report that, American youths and adults stream more TV than in the past but that doesn’t mean they watch less traditional TV. In the year of the report, 40% of Gen Z (aged between 13 and 17) watched the same amount of TV as the year before, 35% a bit less and 25% a bit more. And the latest data by Nielsen on 2016 reveals that American teenagers (aged between 12 and 17) spend 14 hours per week watching TV.

What about Italy? La Repubblica reports that we have about 700,000 users of streaming TV, of which 280,000 are Netflix users. It’s interesting to note that in September 2015 Netflix users were about 200,000 and a few months later in January 2016 the amount had tripled.

In 2016, the Nextplora Institute revealed that 15% of users over 18 years old used paid streaming TV, 48% using Netflix, 40% Infinity and 37% Sky Online (NOW TV). Free platforms were also successful, including Youtube (57% saying they used it) and Rai.tv (40%).

Although we’ve seen the diffusion and growth of streaming TV, Italy still remains a country addicted to traditional TV, as IHS Technology report. We spend four hours a day watching TV, making us the biggest users West Europe.

So, dear old television, you still got it!

Do you stream TV? Do you think you less traditional TV as a result? Tweet me @agostinellialdo.

If you liked this post, you should also read “Several new researches and forecast have confirmed it: online ADVs are mainly video based“