How much TV is too much TV?

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

MainFT reports today that the BBC is set to make bespoke programmes for YouTube. For the sweet sweet advertising revenues, sure. But also:

The deal represents an effort by the BBC to attract and retain younger audiences. It also underscores the difficulties of many traditional broadcasters in competing with the deep pockets of US streamers such as Netflix and Disney, as well as YouTube.

This sounds right. But where are the charts to prove it?

By luck this week, Alphaville found itself down a rabbit hole poring through OfCom’s Media Nations report. Its charts looked too good not to share, but try as we might, we couldn’t shoehorn them into a dissection of prospective changes to US taxation of sovereign wealth funds. But maybe now’s the time? Here goes:

Brits watch a LOT of TV each day:

They tend to be pretty regular in their watching habits. Watching TV on a TV set still dominates viewing habits (top pink), with broadcast and subscription video-on-demand showing shadow peaks:

Yes, the lack of a y-axis is maybe a bit of a chart crime, but we’ll let it pass on aesthetic grounds.

As an overall broadcaster YouTube nonetheless manages to come in second only to the BBC (overtaking it by number of viewers in December 2025, though not by viewing time):

But looking only at the first channel a viewer watches for a minute or more, YouTube is to the kids what BBC1 is to the elderly:

The total UK commercial market size is around £17bn, though we read the chart to exclude YouTube adverts.

And they do have another chart showing UK TV and social video advertising expenditures, 2022-2024:

But the pièce de résistance is this beauty:

The chart shows that the average time spent watching TV each day increases steadily as people age, with children spending an average of three hours a day watching a mixture of mostly YouTube and subscription video, and retirees spending an average of six and a half hours a day watching mostly live TV.

People get antsy about kids watching short-form video on their phones. But if their concerns are about slow radicalisation and brainrot, retirees spending 40 per cent of their waking lives on passive TV consumption sounds a lot.