BBC Fights Back As Young Viewers Choose TikTok

A new Ofcom report on the BBC has revealed just how badly the broadcaster is struggling to stay relevant with young viewers.

While your parents might still tune in religiously to BBC One every evening, British youngsters aged 16-24 now spend just 13% of their viewing time watching traditional TV channels – and a tiny 5% with the BBC.

For comparison, these same viewers spend 34% of their time on video platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Compare that to viewers over 35, who spend 50% of their time with traditional TV channels and 23% with the BBC, and you can see just how dramatic the generational divide has become.

It’s a dramatic shift that shows just how far the BBC’s star has fallen with younger audiences – but the corporation is trying to fight back.

A Crisis of Relevance

The numbers, published on Ofcom’s seventh Annual Report on the BBC, paint a stark picture.

While 92% of over-55s use BBC services each week, that drops to just 78% for 16-34 year olds.

And when young people do watch the BBC, they’re spending much less time with it – the average time 16-34s spend with BBC content has nearly halved, from 75 minutes per day in 2017 to just 46 minutes in 2023.

BBC iPlayer, which should be the broadcaster’s secret weapon in the streaming age, accounts for just 4% of all viewing – though it remains the largest British streaming service.

Compare that to the time young people spend on TikTok, YouTube and Netflix, and you can see why the BBC is worried.

Fighting Back (With Mixed Results)

To their credit, the BBC isn’t just accepting this decline. They’ve been trying various strategies to win back younger viewers, though with varying degrees of success.

One of their most successful ventures has been on TikTok, where the BBC News account has seen monthly views more than double from 48.7 million to 103.7 million.

Almost half of their daily users are aged 18-24, suggesting they can reach young people when they try.

They’ve also had some hits with shows like The Traitors, which has become their biggest new entertainment brand for 16-34s (and is returning with Series 3 on New Year’s Eve 2025).

Also, the BBC’s strategy of acquiring US shows like Gossip Girl for iPlayer has helped attract younger viewers, though whether these viewers stick around for other BBC content is less clear.

The iPlayer Problem

BBC iPlayer should be the perfect solution for reaching younger viewers who prefer streaming to traditional TV.

But while 4.1 million young accounts now use iPlayer weekly (meeting the BBC’s target), it’s still struggling to compete with Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming giants.

The BBC has been trying to improve iPlayer with new features like:

• New personalised recommendation systems
• Improved content discovery with curated ‘rails’ of content
• Better visibility for news content
• Easier discovery of audio-described and signed content

But many young viewers still see iPlayer as a catch-up service rather than a destination for discovering new content.

And with Netflix and Disney+ spending billions on content, the BBC’s more modest budgets make it hard to compete.

Looking Ahead

According to Ofcom’s report, the BBC is planning several new digital initiatives, including:

• Expanding their BBC Verify fact-checking service
• Launching new digital radio stations
• Further developing their online services
• Creating more content specifically for social media platforms

But critics might argue these changes are too little, too late. While older generations remain loyal to the BBC, younger viewers increasingly see it as irrelevant to their lives.

Ofcom’s report shows that only 44% of viewers from minority ethnic backgrounds and those from working-class backgrounds find BBC content relevant to them.

The BBC’s Troubled Year

This damning Ofcom report caps off what’s been a challenging year for the BBC.

Recently, we learned that TV Licence fee evasion has hit its highest point in nearly 30 years, with 11.30% of households not paying when they should.

Even more striking? Around 3.3 million homes have officially declared they don’t need a licence at all – that’s half a million more than last year.

In early November, BBC Chairman Samir Shah gave a landmark speech where he laid out some big ideas for the broadcaster’s future.

Among them? Making the BBC’s Royal Charter permanent (just like the Bank of England’s) and fighting for better visibility on your streaming devices – think dedicated BBC buttons on remotes and prime spots on smart TV home screens.

If you’re wondering why Shah is so concerned about where BBC apps appear on your TV, well, the new Ofcom report gives us the answer – when young viewers spend more than a third of their time on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, every click counts.

And right now, British content is getting buried under Netflix and Prime Video buttons on our remotes.

Meanwhile, the government announced last week that the licence fee will go up by £5 in 2025 (to £174.50), and they’re planning to launch a major public consultation about the BBC’s future.

Looking at all these challenges together – from young viewers abandoning ship to rising licence fee evasion – it’s clear the BBC is facing a perfect storm.

And while they’re trying to adapt, Ofcom’s new report suggests they’ll need to move much faster if they want to avoid becoming irrelevant to the next generation of viewers.

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