By Emma McGladdery
At the start of last week, I posted a Google-forms survey several Kirklees-based Facebook groups. I was intrigued to know what the residents of Kirklees watch on television and if people’s viewing habits changed at all over the first national lockdown that took place earlier this year.
The lockdown resulted in a lot of extra time at home for people all over the UK, but did we watch more TV during this period?
Interestingly, the residents of Kirklees’ answers, when asked if they watched more TV over lockdown, were fairly equal.
- 28.1% of people answered yes, they did watch more TV than usual.
- 34.4% of people answered no, letting us know they didn’t watch more TV than usual over the lockdown period.
- 37.5% of people responded with ‘somewhat’. These Kirklees residents claimed to have watched a little more TV than normal, but their overall viewing habits remained mostly the same.
I was also curious as to whether or not people prefered movies or televison, seeing as cinemas were closed for the duration of the lockdown.
When asked about sitting down in front of the television, 81.3% of survey participants told us they would prefer to watch a television series rather than a film, leaving the other 18.8% of survey participants more inclined to choose a film over a television series.
The survey also asked a wide range of questions on how Kirklees residents watch TV as well as what they watch. I found the responses to these questions to be quite interesting.
When asked ‘which channels/services are you most likely to spend time with?’ – the responses were streaming platform heavy.
- 28.1% of participants chose BBC One.
- 0% of participants chose BBC Two.
- 9.4% of participants chose ITV.
- Another 9.4% of participants chose Channel 4.
- 6.3% of participants chose other Freeview channels, such as Comedy Central, Dave, Gold, etc.
- 3.1% of participants preferred other channels not mentioned in the survey.
- And finally, 43.8% of participants chose the option ‘I am most likely to stream content, (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV, etc.)’.
It seems to be streaming services that become the most popular form of viewing among our residents that completed this survey. That’s a lot of streaming service subscriptions coming from Kirklees.
Lastly, when asked if they used streaming services more over the national lockdown, it was a pretty even split, with 53.1% of people answering no, claiming they did not use streaming services more during the lockdown, and 46.9% of people answering yes, letting us know that they had spent more time than usual using streaming services during the lockdown.
The residents of Kirklees that took this survey provided quite interesting data for us, and although a large quantity residents all around the UK have spent more time at home than ever over the last few months, there was still quite a large chunk of people that did not change their television viewing and consumption habits.
Interestingly, Netflix and streaming services in general seem to be a popular purchase among our residents.
Thank you to every Kirklees resident that took part in this survey. Households all around Kirklees have definitely proved they are tech-savvy content streamers.