YouTube is leading the charge in the streaming takeover of TV sets, with the service now the first place younger viewers go as soon as they switch on, according to Ofcom’s annual report on the United Kingdom’s media habits.

Overall people spent an average of 4 hours 30 minutes per day watching TV and video content at home in 2024. And, while broadcast TV still accounts for the majority of in-home viewing (56 percent), audiences are increasingly turning to YouTube. The platform is now the second most-watched service in the UK, behind the BBC and ahead of ITV.

At home, people spent 39 minutes on YouTube per day in 2024, with 16 minutes of this via the household’s TV set. Younger adults aged 16-34 are driving this trend, watching 18 minutes of YouTube a day on TV, while one in five (20 percent) children aged 4-15 head straight to the app as soon as they turn the set on.

But it’s not just Gen Z and Alpha driving this trend. Over 55s are now watching nearly double the amount of YouTube content on their TVs compared to the previous year (11 minutes per day in December 2024, up from just 6 minutes in January 2023).  Now, 42 percent of all viewing of this service last year (up from 33 percent in 2023) was watched on a TV set by this age group.

  ‘Gavin and Stacy: The Finale’ (18.6 million) was the most watched programme last year, followed by ‘Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ (16.9 million), with the fourth episode of ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ (14.7 million)coming in third. The top two most-watched programmes both aired first on Christmas day last year, the Ofcom survey revealed.

Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ was the most-watched TV event in the first quarter of 2025 with 12.2 million viewers until the end of March. This marked the first time a streaming title topped weekly TV ratings, british communications regulator Ofcom said yesterday in a statement.