(Finance) – In the first quarter of 2024The Italian television landscape showed contrasting trends, maintaining overall stability but with significant internal changes among the main television groups. According to the‘Agcom’s Quarterly Communications ObservatoryThe Average daily ratings in the television sector have not undergone substantial variations compared to the same period of the previous year, both in the whole day (confirming 9.06 million viewers) both in the prime time slot (20.96 million viewers, -0.3%).
In the first quarter of 2024, Rai has overtaken Mediaset for average daily viewers across the entire day (3.46 million vs. 3.35 million). However, the public concessionaire has lost around 100 thousand daily listeners compared to 2023 (-2.7%), while Mediaset recorded a more contained decline of 50 thousand viewers (-1.6%).
Extending the time frame from 2020 to 2024, Rai lost 1.04 million viewers (-23.1%), while Mediaset saw a more moderate reduction of around 530 thousand viewers (-13.6%). In the first quarter of 2024, Rai surpassed Mediaset by 1.2 percentage points of share (38.1% vs. 36.9%). In 2020, Rai had a share share that was 5.6 percentage points higher than Mediaset (40.2% vs. 34.7%).
In the band prime timein the first three months of 2024, Rai confirmed itself as the main television publisher with average daily listenership of 8.28 million (39.5% share)), against 7.46 million for Mediaset (35.6% share). The drop in viewers compared to the corresponding period in 2023 was 280 thousand for Rai and 380 thousand for Mediaset. The gap in audiences between the two groups went from 730 to approximately 820 thousand units between 2023 and 2024, while in 2020 it was 1.46 million daily viewers.
WB/Discovery recorded a significant growth with 800 thousand daily viewers (+15.3%)surpassing Comcast/Sky which had 640 thousand viewers with a slight increase (+1.1%). Also the Cairo/La7 group showed an increase in ratings (+8.6%) with approximately 360 thousand viewers. In the prime time slot, WB/Discovery reached 1.81 million daily listeners (+30.3%), surpassing Comcast/Sky with 1.48 million daily listeners (+1.1%). The Cairo/La7 group recorded 1.19 million listens (+17%), an increase of approximately 170 thousand listeners compared to 2023.
The ratings of other television groups in the first quarter of 2024 showed a slight increase (+10 thousand ratings) in the whole day and a reduction of equal size in prime time. Between 2020 and 2024, their weight on the overall ratings fell from 5.8% to 5.1% in the whole day and from 4.1% to 3.5% in prime time.
In the sector of Video-on-demand (VOD) services for a fee onlyMarch 2024 saw a growth of 113 thousand units compared to the same month of the previous year, reaching 15.388 million unique surfers. Netflix, with 8.2 million unique users, was the only operator to record a decline (-7.3%). Amazon Prime Video had 6.9 million average visitors (+8.9%), Disney+ 3.8 million (+5.1%), Dazn 2.5 million (+6.8%) and Now (Sky) 1.5 million (+28.9%).
The time of navigation on the main paid video streaming sites remained stable at approximately 38 million hours by March 2024. Netflix recorded a decrease from 90 million hours in the first quarter of 2023 to 86 million hours in the same period of 2024 (-4.5%). Dazn also showed a decline in browsing hours, going from 2.5 hours in the first quarter of 2023 to 2.1 hours in 2024. On the contrary, Amazon Prime Video saw an increase in browsing time from 13 to 15 million hours, as did Disney+ and Sky/Now.
The platforms Free VODs recorded nearly 36 million unique users in March 2024remaining stable compared to the previous year. Among these, News Mediaset Sites had 21.4 million unique users, Sky TG24 9 million and RaiPlay 8.7 million.