La 1, queen of delayed hearings

The CEO of Mediaset España, Alessandro Salem, already commented last week at the presentation of the new season of Telecinco: traditional channels find their strong and differentiating point in live broadcasting with respect to the new à la carte offers. But that does not prevent time-shifted consumption from being increasingly relevant for channels such as La 1, Antena 3 and Telecinco. The listings of the 25 most watched programs After their original broadcast, they have a clear winner every month: the public channel appears in almost all positions.

Since the arrival of on-demand content platforms and DTT channels and the rise among the youngest of digital offers such as YouTube, TikTok and Twitch, traditional networks have seen how the audience pie begins to be shared among many more diners. Added to this fragmentation this season is the high competitiveness on the RTVE, Atresmedia and Mediaset España grid, full of signings, premieres and changes in their programming. That is why the deferral is so important. A clear example is that of the complicated night on Thursday. If a viewer wants to continue MasterChef Celebrity at 1 and Big Brother VIP 8 on Telecinco (or the interviews of the soccer player Joaquín on Antena 3), you will have no choice but to recover one or more of those programs at another time of the week, through the networks’ on-demand content service, since they coincide in broadcast.

The characters that star in the contents of these spaces are also duplicated. Last week, the controversial tiktoker Luca Dazi made an appearance at the same time in the talent culinary show on the public channel, recorded weeks ago, and as a contestant on the reality of coexistence from Mediaset España, broadcast live.

Something similar happened with one of the favorite spots on free-to-air television: Ana Obregón. The actress, very present in the media in recent months due to her controversial birth through surrogacy of her granddaughter, gave interviews to the three channels. When Antena 3 announced that the new season of Joaquín, the rookie began on Thursday, September 14 with the presence of Obregón, her two rivals counterprogrammed to break the exclusive, simultaneously broadcasting the presenter’s interventions a day earlier on Blood ties (La 1), with Jordi González, and The musical of your life (Telecinco), with Carlos Sobera. Resorting to delayed viewing would be the only way to view all the statements of the protagonist of Ana and the seven.

Delayed consumption trends

The delayed audience records the non-linear consumption of television content over the seven days following the live broadcast, as well as the delayed consumption on the same day of said broadcast. The unique viewers of this consumption in August 2023 were 20.4 million, according to the most recent monthly report from Barlovento Comunicación based on data collected by Kantar Media, which shows the clear dominance of La 1 over private channels.

According to this monthly study, time-shifted consumption is six minutes per person per day, which represents 4% of total television consumption. The profile that consumes traditional television in this modality is that of women (in 55% of cases) and viewers between 45 and 64 years old (in 45% of cases). Although the report records consumption for the seven days after the broadcast, a good part of this audience (64%) recovers the programs either the same day they appear on television or the next day.

That trend that Salem highlighted about the strength of live broadcasting on traditional television is recorded in consumption data in the aftermath. Even among the main channels, the viewer prefers to watch the programs offered live and leaves the recorded content for later. Four starsprogrammed in the access prime time from La 1, in front of the almighty The anthill on Antena 3, has been the series that has added the most delayed viewers in August. On day 1 it added 310,000 views. The afternoon soap opera on the public channel also stands out The promise, which on Friday, August 11, had 339,000 views. Both products increased their audience by a quarter compared to their data recorded by audiometers. The most watched time-shifted content throughout the month on Antena 3 is also a series, the French one ACI: High intellectual capacity.

The public entity also achieves good results in its à la carte content platform (which not only includes the offer of the linear channels mentioned, but also other exclusive à la carte content). The RTVE Play platform accumulated a monthly average of 9.4 million unique users last season, between September 2022 and June 2023. This is two million more than the previous season, according to RTVE’s own data. It benefits from being free compared to the two private versions, which have a monthly fee. GECA consulted on the penetration of platforms in Spainin July 2023 it stands out that RTVE Play reaches 26.4% of households that have access to payment platforms, compared to 25.1% for the free version of AtresPlayer (Atresmedia) and 17.2% for free version of MiTele Plus (Mediaset Spain).

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