Auditel, TV growing between connected screens and individual viewing

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TV as a home? An idea that now belongs to the past. What is celebrating 70 years is a medium made for increasingly individual visions, which plays on a plurality of screens (from smartphones, to tablets, to PCs) and with contents that are increasingly moving from the schedule towards on demand. Which doesn’t mean (just) platforms given that traditional broadcasters have understood that this is the path to follow, especially to capture the interest of younger generations. Which would otherwise relegate the good old TV to the household ornaments.

This is the picture of the TV market that emerges from the annual report to Parliament “70 years of TV, 40 years of Auditel: the role of JICs in the new media scenario”, presented in the morning by the president of Auditel, Andrea Imperiali, to the Chamber of Deputies . «Italian TV, thanks also to the early adoption and rapid diffusion of digital terrestrial and high definition, has adapted promptly to the new reality, always remaining central in our society; always contributing to the modernization of the country; gradually transforming itself from a classic, diffusive medium to a predominantly interactive digital medium. With excellent results”, observed Andrea Imperiali.

The numbers show that in the 2022-2023 television season, Italian broadcasters managed to grow in Total Audience (+1.4% compared to the previous season), reached over 90% of viewers daily and conquered 82.3% of the total time dedicated to TV viewing also thanks to the incremental listening generated by digital screens (growth of 20.3% for views and 25.1% in terms of time spent). All this in an Italy populated – according to the latest Auditel-Censis report presented last November – by 122 million devices, which grew by 2.2% in the last year and by 9.6% from 2017 to today, for a average of around five screens per family and over two screens per individual. Ultimately the numbers say that today in Italian homes there are 21 million Smart TVs and 20 and a half million traditional televisions. In the last seven years, traditional televisions have decreased by 12.1 million, while Smart TVs have tripled, going from just over 7 to 21 million.

In this context, TV has changed, progressed, together with a context on which, says the Auditel president, we need to work so that every piece fits well in its place. Moreover, Imperiali underlines, «today 27 different platforms operate on the global streaming market. In 2012 there was only Netflix.” And therefore «the Union’s regulatory framework in such a delicate sector for the general interest must urgently be completed, in the interests of transparency, equity and above all sustainability. Starting from the no longer tolerable European tax havens, which distort competition, slow down innovation and widen the financial gap between the global giants and the continental players”.

However, a level playing field will also be fundamental in Auditel’s “core business”: measurements. “Self-measurements are no longer tolerable.” Moreover, Imperiali comments, «if until yesterday it was thought that measurement systems only contributed to establishing a measure of the return on advertising investments, today they have become a fundamental safeguard of competition and digital democracy, since they are the only ones that can certify with precision the real preferences of consumers”. Furthermore «they are indispensable in the correct distribution of public funding; they expose, by contrast, the dangers inherent in the information gap, the imbalance in the accessibility and verifiability of data, which impacts the functioning of the market, with increasingly significant implications in economic, competition, security and also data protection terms ». In short, “they ultimately contribute to the integrity and overall fairness of the system, with clear repercussions also on pluralism and the quality of information”.