Do you re­mem­ber ? At the be­gin­ning of 2020, we were dis­cussing mod­ern and re­spon­si­ble he­do­nism, think­ing on­ly of glam­orous par­ties ? In­stead of grand cel­e­bra­tions, Coro­na is keep­ing the world on its toes. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly and med­ical­ly, the spread of Covid-19 is an ex­oge­nous shock – a mas­sive event that no one saw com­ing and has ren­dered all pre­dic­tions moot.

One ex­am­ple of these pro­found changes is the in­creased use of mo­tion pic­tures. Tele­vi­sion in par­tic­u­lar in­creased sharply in 2020, con­trary to the de­clin­ing trend, dri­ven by in­di­vid­u­als’ strong need for in­for­ma­tion. If 2020 has shown one thing, it’s this : in­ter­est in me­dia is enor­mous­ly high, es­pe­cial­ly in tur­bu­lent (cri­sis) times.

I : TV demon­strates its strength

If the sit­u­a­tion changes per­ma­nent­ly and shut­down be­comes the new re­al­i­ty, TV plays to its full strengths : It in­forms, en­ter­tains and dis­tracts, whisks peo­ple away to oth­er worlds and brings them back in­to their liv­ing rooms. The strength of this ef­fect is par­tic­u­lar­ly ev­i­dent in the de­vel­op­ment of its re­cip­i­ents : The pro­por­tion of over-14s who switched on every day rose to 72 per­cent (up 3.2 per­cent on the pre­vi­ous year). How­ev­er, not on­ly did more in­di­vid­u­als tune in, they al­so sat and watched for longer. These da­ta show a clear cor­re­la­tion be­tween the over­all pro­gres­sion of the coro­na pan­dem­ic and view­ing habits. TV us­age, for ex­am­ple, was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the pre­vi­ous year’s lev­el, es­pe­cial­ly in March and April 2020. The pic­ture was sim­i­lar in the fall and ear­ly win­ter : Av­er­age view­ing time per day, which had ac­tu­al­ly been de­clin­ing in re­cent years, in­creased by 10 min­utes per day among view­ers (this in­crease is al­so no­table be­cause high-pub­lic­i­ty sports and oth­er TV events did not oc­cur in 2020).

The shut­down and lim­it­ed leisure op­tions mean that TV is once again be­com­ing a warm­ing bon­fire. This be­hav­ior pat­tern is al­so ev­i­dent in younger tar­get groups : Among 14- to 49-year-olds, the de­cline in av­er­age view­ing time has stopped. It stands at 137 min­utes a day. This sta­bi­liza­tion is re­mark­able, as this group in par­tic­u­lar con­sumes mov­ing im­age con­tent in­de­pen­dent­ly of time via stream­ing ser­vices and us­es clas­sic lin­ear tele­vi­sion more selectively.

II : In­for­ma­tion sat­u­ra­tion is nowhere near in sight

For all tar­get groups, an in­creased need for in­for­ma­tion can be iden­ti­fied as the dri­ver of TV use. The broad­cast­ers’ claim to pro­vide re­cip­i­ents with in­for­ma­tion that is as up-to-date and pre­cise­ly re­searched as pos­si­ble seems to be pay­ing off : The news is once again be­com­ing a fixed point of en­try, a brack­et for the day, and thus a struc­tur­ing el­e­ment. Sta­tions such as the BBC, France III, Rai Uno and ARD all achieved a huge in­flux. This is al­so ev­i­dent in the younger tar­get groups : 88 per­cent of 14- to 29-year-olds had con­tact with the news pro­grams of pub­lic broad­cast­ers on lin­ear tele­vi­sion and on their on­line plat­form last year.

The re­al tar­get group reach across all lin­ear and non-lin­ear me­dia can­not be pre­cise­ly quan­ti­fied, but it is im­mense. This in­creased in­ter­est in in­for­ma­tion pro­grams shows that peo­ple want to know what the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is, what mea­sures will be tak­en next, and how they should be clas­si­fied from a po­lit­i­cal and/or sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive. They are look­ing for well-re­searched in­for­ma­tion and rep­utable sources. This ben­e­fits me­dia with high-qual­i­ty news and re­port­ing expertise.

III : Es­capism thanks to re­al­i­ty shows

In ad­di­tion to its ex­per­tise in in­for­ma­tion, TV scored par­tic­u­lar­ly well last year with fic­tion­al clas­sics and (live) en­ter­tain­ment shows. They amount to just un­der a third of each individual’s to­tal re­cep­tion time and in­di­cate that people’s mood os­cil­lates be­tween an in­creased need for in­for­ma­tion by one side and a loss of re­al­i­ty by the other.

En­ter­tain­ing for­mats and re­al­i­ty shows are per­ceived as a sub­sti­tute for re­al­i­ty and are re­ceived with cor­re­spond­ing plea­sure. At Christ­mas, when many peo­ple were un­able to cel­e­brate with their usu­al en­vi­ron­ment, nos­tal­gic shows and clas­sic films scored par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Church ser­vices were al­so very much en­joyed in this sense via TV in­stead of be­ing on site in church. The same was true on New Year’s Eve. Over­all, view­ing on these two days was at a record high in a ten-year comparison.

IV : Alone at home

Cur­fews in par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed re­gions (or through­out the coun­try) and tem­po­rary re­stric­tions on the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in face-to-face meet­ings are al­so re­flect­ed in the da­ta. Out-of-home use was be­low the pri­or-year lev­el in the to­tal au­di­ence and among 14- to 49-year-olds in the months end­ing March 2020. This trend is al­so cer­tain to con­tin­ue de­pend­ing on up­com­ing vac­ci­na­tion suc­cess and ex­ist­ing restrictions.

V : Stream­ing ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a big screen boost

Stream­ing is in­creas­ing­ly tap­ping in­to broad­er view­er groups and vy­ing for people’s at­ten­tion along­side tra­di­tion­al of­fer­ings. This de­vel­op­ment ac­cel­er­at­ed dur­ing the cri­sis. Net reach in­creased by up to a third for the en­tire au­di­ence. Time spent stream­ing has in­creased by 46 per­cent. It is al­so ev­i­dent that video-on-de­mand con­tin­ues to rise and is in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar on the BBS.

Con­clu­sion : The coro­na cri­sis push­es mo­tion pictures

Over the course of the past year, a fair­ly clear cor­re­la­tion has emerged be­tween the pan­dem­ic and ris­ing mo­tion pic­ture us­age. The us­age fig­ures can be at­trib­uted on the one hand to an un­bro­ken high in­ter­est in news and in­for­ma­tion pro­grams, and on the oth­er hand al­so to en­ter­tain­ment shows on clas­sic lin­ear tele­vi­sion and the in­creas­ing rel­e­vance of stream­ing con­tent. In ad­di­tion, it can be seen that the en­thu­si­asm for stream­ing con­tent along­side tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion will in­creas­ing­ly pen­e­trate the heart of the Eu­ro­pean pop­u­la­tion over time.