Television retains its strong position in the CEE markets. Viewing time among young audience has decreased slightly in the first half of the year; in Poland this drop has reached 5 percent. According to the Wavemaker study which the company provided to CEETV, the SVOD effect is felt strongly in Western European markets and Scandinavia in particular, with Norway recording the biggest drop in numbers.

In Central and Eastern European markets, television quite effectively combats the competition from online video content. The analysis by the Wavemaker media agency shows that the decrease in the time young viewers devoted to watching linear TV is expressed here by low single-digit values, while in broader demographic groups, the drops are almost negligible.

In the CEE region, Romanians watch TV the longest, averaging 330 minutes a day (group 4+) from January to June, which shows no change from last year’s figures, while young viewers (13-29) average 220 minutes, which is 6 less than the comparable 2017 values for the first half of the year.

In terms of the daily viewing time length, Poles rank third in the CEE region, behind Hungary. 263 minutes for the general group and 122 minutes among 13-29 year-olds, meaning that, as in most CEE markets, a slight drop in watching time (7 minutes) has been recorded among young Polish viewers.

Lithuania is the exception on the map of Central and Eastern Europe; the dynamics of changes recorded there in the first half of 2018 are similar to the markets of Western Europe. Lithuanian 13-29 year olds spent 13 percent less time on watching TV than a year before.

“Young viewer groups, who most often reach for alternative sources of video content, offer the most disturbing picture of the future of linear TV. In this respect, the last half of the year was kind to broadcasters in the CEE region,” comments Izabela Albrychiewicz, President of Wavemaker and Regional Agency Leader for CEE markets. “In Poland, we have observed a significant decrease in the viewing time in the second half of the previous year. For now, the figures have returned to more stable dynamics. Those may change following the announcement of Polish-led Netflix original productions. Locally produced series drive a lot of VOD subscription sales,” she adds.

The market of subscription video on demand services, with a wide range of high-quality content, is already rebuilding the viewing patterns in the TV markets of Western Europe, and Scandinavia in particular.

Among the young viewers group (13-29 years old), there have been clear decreases in viewing time and daily coverage for television services for several half-year periods. In the first half of 2018, only every third young Swede turned on the television every day (in comparison, this indicator for Romania still reaches 56 percent) and watched TV for only 49 minutes. Norway has recorded the biggest drop, with the viewing time in the young group shrinking by as much as 29%, but the methodology of TV audience measurement has also changed, which should be taken into account when making the comparison.

The change in the popularity of television in the CEE and Western European markets is clearly correlated to the popularity of alternative sources of high-quality programs. Where SVOD services (such as Netflix or Amazon Prime) have become a mass service, the losses of linear television are bigger. Data provided by Dataxis, a research company, have shown that last year in the Nordic markets, the popularity of SVOD subscriptions has risen to 68 percent in households equipped with a TV set. In comparison, for CEE markets this number has reached 5 percent (Dataxis study includes countries mentioned in the earlier Wavemaker analysis).

“Television is currently losing ground mainly to platforms which are closed to advertisers, i.e. that do not compete in this area with traditional TV services. However, they take away from TV viewing time and coverage, diminishing its key benefits as an advertising medium. In Sweden, TV advertisements will account for 16 percent of advertising expenditure this year, according to GroupM. Only four years ago, TV received a quarter of all investment there. In the CEE markets, both the viewing figures and TV share in advertising budgets remain quite stable. Romania remains top of the group, where every 6 out of 10 RON are still invested in TV advertising,” says Izabela Albrychiewicz.