One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was in 2014 calling out Thinkbox (the UK’s TV advocacy / research group) for pushing dodgy stats misrepresenting the state of video consumption and the health of TV.*
It’s twelve years later… and here we are again.
This time I’m here with some thoughts about a post from Lindsey Clay, Thinkbox’s CEO, which cites lots of stats about how big and important TV continues to be in relation to YouTube, concluding that: “TV remains the most culturally, commercially, and creatively powerful place a brand can be.”
In coming to this conclusion she relies on OFCOM’s latest Media Nations report. I’m (kinda) qualified to comment on the role of TV for kids and teens, so this piece focuses on that. I have the following observations:
In their quest to assert that “Kids watch loads more TV than YouTube”, Thinkbox have to torture data in ways more usually seen in Guantanamo Bay
Specifically, they say: “Media Nations shows that TV accounts for 41% of 4-15's viewing. YouTube accounts for 28%.”
I initially thought that this stat was simply spun out of whole cloth. OFCOM specifically include a chart on page 19 of the report that shows that kids (ages 4-15) spend only 22% of their time watching ‘Broadcasters’ (Live TV + Recorded Playback + BVoD).
After some back and forth with Thinkbox’s research team**, I think I’ve figured it out. The 41% is ALL of broadcasters PLUS all of Netflix. I… don’t really know why you’d group those two together? A far more relevant way to look at the same data seems to me to look at things by service. Evan Shapiro did just that. Here’s what it shows:
So… not only is YouTube three times the size of the BBC, TikTok is approximately twice the size of ITV. I mean, look at this chart and tell me that “kids watch loads more TV than YouTube”.
The whole dataset structurally understates the importance of YouTube & TikTok
Thinkbox’s post looks at in-home viewing via wifi. That is, it excludes both on mobile data and viewing out the home. That fairly obviously skews the data. Young people spend a lot of time with their mobiles (arguably too much, but that’s another story) and mobiles are often connected via… well mobile data.
There’s no real good reason to exclude that viewing. Mobile screens are screens, eyeballs watching those screens are eyeballs, and 4G is not a less valid means of transmitting data packets to those screens.
I get the challenges in getting consistent data across multiple platforms, but it’s 2025. We should probably acknowledge that watching video on mobile is a thing.
In an effort to find weaknesses in YouTube, Thinkbox ignore the way ads on the platform are actually bought
Thinkbox observe that “YouTube’s biggest channel on the TV set – Peppa Pig – would be the 84th largest show on TV.”
It’s true that YouTube is fragmented. There’s a lot to choose from. But - if you’re worried that any individual channel is smaller than you’d like, one really good thing to do is buy more than one channel. This is not hard to do! YouTube has this whole interface for it. And if you don’t trust YouTube’s tools and you’d like a curated selection of age appropriate content, contextually relevant to your audience, human curated to be brand safe - well, there’s a solution for that too.
(Also, despite having data for all in-home device viewing, suddenly we’re telling the story based on “YouTube channels on the TV set”, which conveniently excludes the mobile devices most popular with pre-schoolers. The bad man is approaching the data with pliers again)
Thinkbox end up painting a very strange picture of what’s driving culture
Specifically, Lindsey asserts that: “the biggest audiences – like the 14.7 million for Mr. Bates or the 14.9 million for Adolescence – are on TV. This doesn’t look like changing.”
“This… doesn’t… look… like changing”. What!? Of course it’s changing! There is a headline in like 20pt bold type in Media Lives which says: “Broadcast TV viewing continued its long-term decline in 2024, with young adults having the sharpest decline” (p.19).
TV is just obviously losing its relative significance as the main hub for cultural moments. Taylor Swift just got engaged. If you seriously think that a generation of teens were glued to their TVs to follow the latest on the story then… IDK. Bridge for sale.
Look, I sort of don’t mind this stuff. Thinkbox have an advocacy job to do and I guess they’re doing it. But I don’t think it’s helpful. There IS a lot that broadcasters can and should be doing to stay relevant. Channel4 have been making great strides in making use of YouTube. The BBC have likewise been doing a way better job of showing up across multiple platforms - look how well they’ve done developing Bluey across TikTok and YouTube.
One of the comments on the post is about how great it is that “hard truths [are] dispelling many myths”. Well, I agree the industry could use hard truths. This post ain’t one of them.
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*The actual post is long lost to the sands of a discontinued ghost.io subscription, but here’s the original tweet.
** Shout out to them btw. Genuinely appreciated their willingness to engage.