Barb, the audience measurement specialist, has published a first-time report entitled What People Watched in 2025.

The report explores how people in the UK watched their favourite television show last year. It covers live and on-demand, linear and streaming viewing for broadcasters, streamers and video-sharing platforms.

The findings include:

Live viewing remains a substantial part of viewing, even for younger audiences. In December 2025, viewing live was 45 per cent of total identified viewing on the TV set. Programmes with large live audiences in 2025 included sporting events like the BBC and ITV’s coverage of the Women’s Euros final, entertainment shows such as BBC One’s Celebrity Traitors and comfort TV like Channel 4’s Gogglebox.

On-demand streaming, via broadcasters’ VoD services, streamers or video-sharing platforms, accounted for 38 per cent of viewing in 2025. A large proportion of viewing last year on the UK’s three biggest streamers – Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix – was to content available for more than 12 months, reflecting the importance of large library catalogues.

The most-used TV navigation platforms in 2025 were Freeview, Sky and smart TV EPGs, with YouTube coming in fourth. Viewers were most likely to turn first to the top ten TV channels* after switching the TV set on, with 37 per cent of viewing sessions starting with one of them. Netflix was the most popular first port of call for young adults, accounting for 26 per cent of TV set switch-ons among 16–34-year-olds, while the same proportion of 4–15-year-old children‘s viewing sessions started with YouTube.

Barb’s independent data show that the TV set has become the most-used device for people to watch YouTube through their domestic WiFi networks. While use of the TV set to watch YouTube is growing among all age groups, viewing is skewed towards children aged 4-15, who accounted for a quarter of YouTube TV-set viewing in 2025 but only one-seventh of the UK population.

Justin Sampson, Chief Executive at Barb, commented: “Commentary about television is too often based on a binary premise that ignores a more complex reality. Barb’s independent evidence points to a world in which viewing is defined more by adaptation than disruption. The prognosis is more connected, nuanced and resilient than the clichés and partial viewpoints suggest. Live audiences are healthy, children and young people haven’t deserted linear services, and there’s an increasingly symbiotic relationship between all services and platforms in the TV ecosystem.”

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Categories: Broadcast, Consumer Behaviour, Content, DTT/DSO, Headline, Research, VOD

Tags: BARB, football, Gogglebox, traitors