British viewers are now as likely to turn to Netflix as the BBC when deciding what to watch, media regulator Ofcom said yesterday, underscoring the intensifying competition between global streaming platforms and traditional broadcasters in the United Kingdom.

Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report found that 26 percent of viewers now choose Netflix first when looking for content, narrowly ahead of the BBC at 25 percent, while ITV ranked as the first choice for 15 percent of audiences.

The findings, according to a statement from the regulator yesterday,  highlight changing viewing habits even as Britain’s public service broadcasters continue to hold their ground against global streaming and video-sharing platforms.

The regulator said broadcaster-owned streaming services, including BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 Streaming and 5 Streaming, recorded the fastest growth among television services, with viewing rising 9 percent from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the expansion of subscription video-on-demand services has slowed, with their presence in UK households stabilising at around 70 percent after surging during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Netflix claimed the two most-watched programmes of 2025 with ‘K-Pop Demon Hunters’ and ‘Adolescence’, but the BBC has so far dominated television viewing in 2026, accounting for eight of the year’s 10 most-watched programmes.

Major live events continued to draw large audiences, with the finale of the BBC’s ‘Celebrity Traitors’ attracting an average audience of 14.9 million viewers across BBC One and BBC iPlayer, while England’s FIFA World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina on July 15 drew a peak audience of 24 million viewers across BBC platforms.

The report also pointed to YouTube’s growing influence on television viewing, with average daily viewing on TV sets more than doubling to 19 minutes per person in 2025 from nine minutes in 2022.

Beyond television, the UK’s audio sector remained resilient, with 93 percent of adults consuming some form of audio content each week and 87 percent tuning into live radio weekly, giving radio the highest reach of any media sector, Ofcom said in a statement.