Almost 60% of Households Now Have Digital TV

4th April 2005

According to Ofcom's TV market quarterly-update, 59.4% of homes now have digital TV.

It's interesting to note the disparity between Ofcom's and the BBC's estimates regarding how many homes have Freeview, with Ofcom estimating that there were 4.6 million households, whereas the BBC claimed that there were 5 million households (both figures were to the end of Q4 2004).

The difference between the estimates seems to be that Ofcom quotes DTT-only households, whereas the BBC must be quoting all households that are capable of receiving DTT irrespective of whether they already have Sky or cable. In their quarterly-update Ofcom say: "the total number of homes now capable of receiving DTT broadcasts is now estimated to be over 5 million", but then go on to show that there are only 4.6 million DTT-only households.

So, it looks like the BBC's 5 million households figure is correct, but they conveniently fail to mention that a significant proportion of these 5 million households already subscribe to Sky or cable. So, the BBC's figure looks like it is a typical piece of PR spin: technically it is not inaccurate, but it just happens to omit a crucial piece of information that is required to properly interpret the figures so as to portray whatever they're portraying in as positive a light as possible.

So, taking the number of DTT-only households to be only 4.6 million, then this calls into question the validity of the claims that Freeview would overtake Sky by the end of 2005, because Ofcom use a figure for the percentage of set-top boxes used for second TVs to be 25%, and assuming that another 3 million set-top boxes will be sold this in 2005 (the same figure as in 2004), then the total number of DTT-only households by the end of 2005 should be 6.85 million, whereas there were already 7.3 million Sky subscribers by the end of Q4 2004. And even if you take the BBC's view that there are 5 million households with DTT altogether then there will only be 7.25 million by the end of 2005, which still falls short of the current number of Sky subscribers.