Glance (Eurodata TV Worldwide) made a its traditionalpresentation “One TV Year In The World: Cracking Audience Trends”at this year Digital MIPTV, where it highlighted the results of a report of trends in world television viewing in 2020, and also mentioned the brightest premieres of early 2021.
For television, on which many have rushed to give up, 2020 has been a»uniquely successful year». Thanks to the pandemic, lockdowns and self-isolation regimes, for the first time in a long time, the total time of TV viewing has increased in the world. In 2020, every viewer on the planet on average watched TV for 2 hours 54 minutes, which is 6 minutes more than in 2019. All over the world, television viewing among young audiences has also increased – by an average of 2 minutes, to 1 hour and 49 minutes.
The time people of all ages spent in front of TV in 2020 has grown everywhere except North America, Southeast Asia and Oceania. In America, for example, TV viewing time was reduced by 8 minutes, to 3 hours 52 minutes, which, however, is still a lot. But the number of viewers using streaming video services in the United States has grown by 10%. However, even there, TV viewing grew in the midst of the first wave of lockdowns, in April 2020.
In Europe, people began to watch TV 15 minutes longer (total average – 3 hours 54 minutes), in South America – 10 minutes longer (3 hours 50 minutes). According to this criterion, for example, Russia was not singled out separately in the presentation, however, on the colourful slides, the country was still listed as a territory where television viewing also significantly increased. The territory saw the greatest growth in April-June, when the numbers increased by 28% compared to the same period in 2019. In October-December, they grew by 8%. In this vein, Russia supported the general European trend.
Of particular interest to the Glance presentation was the section dedicated to the top premieres of the world’s television channels in 2020. Analysts have studied the main markets of the world in 30 countries. They noted that in most of the surveyed territories, despite the overall increase in viewership, new series and shows had a worse start than the 2019 premieres. However, in 18 countries the trend is completely different: the premieres were a huge success. Among them, in particular, they pointed to Sweden, where the highest rated premiere in 2020 became a detective series Bäckström (Backstrom). He also got into the general trend of growing interest in detectives: series and shows of this genre lit up the tops of Finland, Norway, Great Britain and Australia.
Drama continues to be the most powerful magnet for TV audiences, giving channels a boost in ratings. And as an example in the study Glance cited the project of the channel Russia 1,Zuleikha.The consultant noted that dramas also became the best premieres on television in Italy (the TV series Live and Let Live ), Ukraine (the series Fix it in Time ), a number of Asian countries – in Japan, South Korea and China.
Not only TV seres were popular, but also television shows. The Russian adaptation Mask (NTV), hit the top of the most successful premieres of 2020 in 6 countries, the Lego Masteradaptation format – in the top 5 countries, the I Can See You Voice format – in the top 4 countries. But the popularity of game formats, such as quizzes and various intellectual competitions, has noticeably decreased.
Among the brightest international series that managed to declare themselves high ratings in their countries in 2021, Glance noted the German two-part thriller Ferdinand von Schirach: Feinde (Ferdinand von Schirach: Enemies), the French detective thriller La Promesse(The Promise) , British detective miniseries with Luke Evans, The Pembrokeshire Murders, Israeli action movie Hashotrim (Line in the Sand), Czech retro detective ZlocinyVelkéPrahy (The Crimes of Greater Prague), Finnish black comedy Sisäilmaa (Indoor Air). The American TV series was also named bright premieres of recent times: Your Honor (in Russia on Amediateka) and the British drama Finding Alice.
