Charlotte Davies Madrid
Madrid
Updated Monday, March 18, 2024-9:28 p.m.
It is 8:50 in the morning on Monday, March 11.
Dani Moreno
El Gallo
and Cristina Boscá, the presenters of
Anda ya
from Los 40 Principales, start their morning summary of the news of the day.
It's Oscar day.
The gala, held in the wee hours of the morning, ended with an invincible
Oppenheimer
.
"Today is Oscar day," says Boscá.
"After seeing the gala in person..."
Laughter is heard.
Is brown.
"Don't lie, we haven't seen it directly,"
El Gallo
tells his partner.
"Well, okay,
we've seen the best moments of the gala on TikTok and on Instagram
."
And like them, the new generations.
Because yes: sitting on the sofa, picking up the remote control and turning on the television is no longer a reality for many of the youngest people in our country.
Plex
himself
, with his more than 26 million followers, confirmed this during his time at
El Hormiguero
at the beginning of February.
When asked by Pablo Motos if he does precisely that, sit on the couch and pick up the remote control, the 22-year-old
YouTuber
from Zamora responded: "I watched television every night with my parents, until I was 17 when I moved away. And I think
since then I have never watched TV again, except for the occasional football game
."
Once upon a time, television was the device, the medium and, in a way, also the content.
For years, sitting in front of that black box in the living room was the only way to enjoy television entertainment.
Today, however, the advance of
streaming
platforms
and the expansion of social networks have altered the forms of audiovisual consumption
, especially among younger generations.
To know more
Music.
Songs increasingly shorter and catchier in the age of TikTok: "Listening to Queen now would be unthinkable"
Editor: RAQUEL R. INCERTIS Madrid
Editorial: ILLUSTRATIONS: EVA C. SANCHO
Songs increasingly shorter and catchier in the age of TikTok: "Listening to Queen now would be unthinkable"
Television.
The new era in the streaming war: are platforms increasingly similar to traditional television?
Editorial: SARA POLO Madrid
The new era in the streaming war: are platforms increasingly similar to traditional television?
So far this year - from January 1 to March 11 - television consumption by young people aged 13 to 24 is
60 minutes per person per day
, which is 10 minutes less than in the same period of the previous year. , with a downward trend in the last three years, according to data provided to EL MUNDO by the consulting firm Barlovento Comunicación.
In this period, this group represents 4.3% of the total television audience, while in the same period five years ago it represented 5.4%.
Thus, the linear television audience has aged: the average age of Spanish viewers in 2023
stood at 57 years
, the highest annual figure in the entire historical sequence in the audience research period since 1997, according to data from Barlovento.
And the arrival of the myriad devices that can take the place of the flat screen has caused "a flight" of younger viewers, especially in the 13 to 24 year old segment,
towards hybrid television viewing
, led by OTTs -Netflix, HBO, Prime Video- and
online
video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, so the expression "watching TV" has taken on a different meaning.
The linear television audience has aged: the average age of Spanish viewers in 2023 stood at 57 years, the highest figure since 1997
"First of all, we must adjective what television we are referring to," explains José Manuel Eleta, attached to the management of Barlovento Comunicación, when we ask him why young people no longer sit down to watch television.
"If we are talking about conventional television, whose average daily consumption of this segment has been reduced to one hour, young people are indeed stopping watching television. But it is no less true that they continue in front of the screen consuming another new television, a hybrid, with à la carte content,
which is not subject or restricted to linear schedules
," he explains.
And what is the reason for this paradigm shift?
"Technology has been the determining factor in the change in consumption, not only among young people, but in general among any age segment," he continues.
And, in 2023, linear television consumption has weighed an average of 181 minutes per person per day, which is nine minutes less than in 2022, the lowest historical record to date.
"A young person now has audiovisual content in the palm of his hand,
adapted for him with a personalized algorithm
and can interact with other users, thus creating a kind of virtual community," explains Marcos Blanco, professor at ESIC University and expert in Social Half.
"That entire user experience is provided by the mobile device and is not provided by the conventional television."
"Now the young viewer prefers to spend the entire afternoon or evening watching Netflix,
YouTube
or even
TikTok
, without having to keep an eye on the programming schedule," agrees Eleta.
"This has caused a migration of audiences, especially those under 35 years of age, towards these mobile devices that are more suited to their behavior and that go beyond the perimeter of what television is, which is the consumption of social networks. ".
"The young viewer prefers to spend the entire afternoon watching Netflix, YouTube or even TikTok, without having to keep an eye on the grill"
José Manuel Eleta (Barlovento Communication)
Kelly is 26 years old and has lived in Madrid for two years.
She does not have a television, so she consumes television content through her cell phone.
She shares a Netflix account with friends, but prefers to watch
clips
from shows on TikTok because it is, according to her,
"faster and more bearable
. "
She is hooked on the Colombian reality show
The House of the Famous
, but another format that she has discovered this year thanks to the popular vertical platform has been
Operación Triunfo
.
"The program had been going on for a few weeks when I saw a video of Chiara and Violeta's rehearsals when they sang
I Kissed a Girl
. I liked it, so I liked it
and
that's how it all started," the young Venezuelan tells this newspaper.
"Day after day I got more and more videos from the 24-hour channel and from the galas themselves and I became addicted to the program, so much so that I voted for
Naiara
to win without even seeing it live."
OT
is a clear example of how production companies - in this case GestMusic - are coping with the change in television consumption of their youngest viewers.
In addition to being the first contest to be broadcast live through a
streaming platform (Prime Video), it managed to accumulate
718.9 million video views between YouTube and TikTok
by its tenth gala , compared to 336.1 million
2020
.
On TikTok alone, a platform that three years ago, when the previous edition was broadcast, was not so popular, 538.5 million total views were reached.
Therefore, if
OT
has doubled its digital impact, it has been mainly due to this new social network, where last December a peak of more than
44 million video views was achieved in a single day
, according to the program's official statistics.
But for the more traditional networks, a balance must be found to continue capturing that coveted
target
without losing the oldest audiences.
"In our strategy of making programming that attracts the interest of all types of audiences, young people will always have an important role," explains Jaime Guerra, director of the Content Production Division of Mediaset España.
"It is evident that there has been an evolution in the way in which content is consumed, a change that our group has been adapting to in the media in which we offer it," such as its Mitele
on demand
platform and its Instagram profiles, X and TikTok.
The numbers speak for themselves.
One of the group's
great
reality shows ,
The Island of Temptations
, on Telecinco, is the most notable program of the season among young people with 37% of the audience between 13 and 24 years old and 30.2% among those between 25 and 24 years old. 34. Added to this are the 589,800 followers of the program on TikTok, where the account has also reached 13 million
likes
.
And it is this success that the creators of
Callejeros
now seek to replicate with their return to their sister channel Cuatro.
"We have realized that there are many young people who have never seen
Callejeros
or even know what
Callejeros
is , but they do know who the boy from the
pim, pam, pum
or the heir sisters of the only baptistery in Spain is. And they know it from all the videos they have seen of
Callejeros
on social networks," Iñigo Pérez, executive producer of Señor Mono, producer of the program, explains to EL MUNDO.
"We have to make
Callejeros
coexist on the networks to reach young people
," he insists.
"Many young people do not know what 'Callejeros' is, but they do know who the boy from the pim, pam, pum or the heir sisters of the baptistery are"
Iñigo Pérez, executive producer of Señor Mono
"The official accounts of Mediaset programs on TikTok are an important channel to reach young people, which allows us to capture their attention with our content that is most related to this audience," concludes Guerra.
TikTok emphasizes that "it is the
perfect ally for the entertainment industry
, as it allows new television or film content to be discovered, which would otherwise go unnoticed."
But what happens with television content uploaded to the Chinese vertical network by users other than the production companies themselves?
Vittoria, 26, started watching TV on TikTok in 2021, when a clip from the series
Why Women Kill
appeared on her
For You
page .
She clicked on the related search to see the second part, then the third, and so on until she saw the entire first season.
"It was never my intention to watch a series in a fragmented way, but
it became quite addictive to enter that loop of watching chapter after chapter
," says the young woman, who has also seen
House
,
Ugly Betty
and
9-1-1
on the platform.
"Sometimes these shows on TikTok have been on
streaming
platforms that I haven't had access to or weren't available on the ones I have," she continues.
"But after watching
Why Women Kill
- often with distractingly loud music - on TikTok, I signed up for HBO to watch the entire series."
Watching television content in parts is a trend that is increasingly common among younger generations
, but one of the questions that immediately arises is to what extent uploading it is a legal practice.
The platform itself reminds users in its community standards that "the use of third-party content protected by copyright without proper authorization or without a legally valid justification may constitute a breach of TikTok policies."
Fragmenting the content would therefore constitute an infringement of these intellectual property rights.
Aware of this trend, some production companies in the United States have opted for this platform as a way to relaunch their catalog.
Peacock
, from NBC Universal, has jumped on the bandwagon, publishing full episodes of its series
Killing It
and
Love Island USA
to the application, while Paramount took advantage of the so-called
Mean Girls' Day
to post in its entirety (in 23 fragments) the film of the same name, a practice that we may see here in Spain in the not too distant future.
"
Never before have we witnessed such a disruptive change [in television consumption], caused by
streaming
platforms
and social networks that did not exist before," underlines Eleta.
"There is no going back for linear television, that is, there is a tendency that 'I want to consume content when it suits me', from which it is difficult to go back."
So what will the future of television be like?
For Blanco, it will mean the end of television as we know it: "The new generations have already become accustomed, and will continue to become accustomed, from the beginning to another type of technology that the television does not offer. I am not sure that in the future they will not very far from having linear content".
For Eleta, the future, although it will not replicate the present, appears a little more optimistic.
"I think that
in the end the different media will have to coexist
. This will no longer be a question of whether my name is YouTube or my name is TikTok, but really the options and possibilities that I am offering to the user viewer, from two fundamental points of view: one , that of the content, it has to be content that attracts attention, of the highest level; and second, and more relevant almost from a technological point of view, I have to offer it on platforms and in supports that facilitate its access and, above all, convenience to the consumer," concludes the analyst.