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Channel 4’s Youth Audience Increased Drastically Amidst Lock-down
4 Apr, 2020 / 06:35 PM / omnes

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Most of the countries have locked down and TV viewing has increased drastically due to this. A research done by Channel 4 reveals that the figures have gone up like never before and the majority viewers are young people.

A weighted study pulled 1,400+ of its 'Core4 community members' noted an upsurge in youth consumption, in particular, 44% of 16-34s claim to be watching even more TV. Gogglebox, Derry Girls, First Dates, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Last Leg were the respondents' most favoured shows on Channel 4.

It also dug into TV as a trusted source, 82% of 16-34s said they trust TV channels for information on Covid-19. This compared to 63% for newspapers and just 41% for social media, where 64% say they have read or seen fake news about Covid-19.

Last week Channel 4’s Evening News programme doubled its audience aged 16-34 compared to the same week in 2019. On Friday (27 March), the return of Friday Night Dinner attracted an average overnight audience of 2.4 million viewers and the biggest share of young viewers for any comedy series from any commercial broadcaster in over a decade (40.6%).

Gogglebox’s average overnight audience was up by 21% this year compared to all episodes in 2019, which was the highest audience since 2016 (4.9 million).

Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer pulled its biggest ever overnight audience averaging over 4.4 million viewers, with 39.6% share of young viewers.

Young people were almost 1 in 5 more likely to be bingeing on box-sets than usual, they are 56% more likely to be bingeing series compared to the average adult too.

Matt Salmon, director of sales of Channel 4, said: “This deep-dive into the current mindsets of our audience, in particular our young audience, underlines the hugely important role that TV has to play at times of national crisis. People are increasingly looking to trusted brands for information, entertainment and more importantly as a source of connection and comfort as they navigate the new state of normal life they find themselves in.”