TV, young people don't switch it off and broadcasters' streaming grows
The Auditel-Ipsos Doxa report overturns clichés about 18-34 year olds: they like smart TV, big screens and hybrid consumption between linear and on-demand. In new households 'Bvod' increases from 4% to 29% in six years
Television, according to various cyclical prophecies, was supposed to be dead, filed away along with the fax machine, the landline phone, the answering machine. Overrun by mobile phones, wiped out by TikTok, exiled by the young. But no. The Second Auditel-Ipsos Doxa Report tells a more complicated story, and for this reason a more interesting one: young people have not abandoned TV. They have connected it to the Internet, made it big, smart, 4K. But they have not thrown it away.
The photograph presented in Milan, at the Palazzo della Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, starts from a premise, as explained by Nando Pagnoncelli, president of Ipsos Doxa: 'Young people are often described as a single group using age as a criterion, but in reality they are characterised by 3 completely different living conditions and this has an important impact on their endowments and their relationship with television.
The research therefore identifies three pathways for 18-34 year olds: the 'nests that don't empty', i.e. young people still in their family of origin: six out of ten; the 'young people in flight', who have left home to live alone, as a couple or with peers; and the 'very young nests', the new families with children.
In ten years, the number of Italians aged between 18 and 34 has fallen by almost a million. But their relationship with the television screen has not evaporated. In the 'young in flight', of course, the television set can become a postponed luxury: 18% do not have it at home, against a national average of 4%. But when a family is born, the TV set re-enters through the front door. In the new nurseries the 'No TVs' drop to 2%. Not only that: almost nine out of ten young families own at least one Smart TV; in the youngest nurseries 51% have more than one, against the national average of 28%.
This is where the first cliché falls down. Young people do not run away from the big screen. They are, however, more demanding. In new homes, around four out of ten TVs are 4K; 36% of the sets in 'young people's homes' and 30% of those in 'youth nests' are over 50 inches, against a national average of 19%. The living room becomes home cinema, but without giving up the old aerial: seven out of ten TVs in young homes are connected to the Internet; more than nine out of ten remain connected to the TV signal. Linear and on-demand do not exclude each other. They add up.
