According to Médiamétrie’s review of the 2023 TV year, the French consumed an average of 4 hours 37 of video every day.
Live television remains in the lead: some 22 million viewers watch live news bulletins every day, news being consumed 99% live. Sport is also watched 98% live; the 2023 record is rugby, with 16.5 million viewers in front of the France/South Africa quarter-final at the World Cup.
Fiction (series and TV films) is the favourite genre among programmes watched on replay on TV platforms, accounting for 53% of programmes watched on catch-up. Fiction accounts for 20% of programmes watched live, and 64% of content consumed on SVoD platforms.
The possibility of watching programmes in preview (programmes available before their live broadcast) appealed to 10.3 million viewers in November 2023. The increase in preview is stronger than that of replay. The number of programmes (40) that exceeded half a million viewers before their broadcast was multiplied by 10 in 2023 compared with 2022.
Médiamétrie stresses that on-demand TV is gaining ground and becoming rooted in the daily lives of the French : “it reaches 2.3 million additional viewers in five years, for a total of 6.5 million daily viewers in 2023.
As a result, measurement is adapting: preview audiences will be included in a programme’s overall audience, a new stage in Médiamétrie’s benchmark measurement. Since 1st January 2024, it has taken into account the 10% of households without a television and the viewing of programmes at home on Internet screens.
By the end of 2024, Mediamétrie will also begin measuring the audiences of Netflix and its peers, aiming in the longer term for a “total video” measurement covering traditional channels and platforms alike.
