No outings with friends, no restaurants, no museums, no cinema, no theater ... Whether they continue to work or not, the French occupy their free time by staying at home. According to a study carried out for Hadopi (High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights) in April, it is access to cultural goods which comes first among the activities considered essential for the balance of the people questioned during this containment period, cited by 56% of them. 89% have consumed series, films, video games, digital exhibitions, online music in recent weeks.
It is the consumption of fictions online which records the strongest increase: 59% of the people questioned watch more series than before the confinement and 57% more films. No wonder that the various online video platforms beat attendance records, like conventional television (watched by the French 4:43 a day on average against 3:28 in the same period last year, according to Médiamétrie).
An attachment to linear TV programs
The online offers of free channels, reinforced for the occasion with multiple additional content, increased dramatically: + 60% of videos viewed on France.tv during confinement compared to March-April 2019, + 70% on Arte .tv, + 45% on 6Play (group M6). As for MyTF1, the youth offer recorded a 30% increase in attendance.
For Frédéric de Vincelles, director general of programs in charge of the digital platforms of the M6 group, “this increase shows the attachment of viewers to linear television programs, which they can watch at any time. We have adapted our 6Play platform from the start of containment with Kids, Living containment or Feel-Good corners. We offer complete series, old seasons of Beijing Express or Marseillais. Reality TV continues to top the most popular programs on our platform. "
Netflix, MyCanal and Disney +, big winners in containment
Paid offers are also wildly successful. According to the latest figures published by Hadopi which date from March 26 (before the launch of Disney + on April 7), 46% of French people have access to a subscription to video on demand against 36% a year ago. A more recent study conducted by the YouGov institute on April 16 and 17, shows that 34% of French people have subscribed to one or more paid video-on-demand services during confinement (in addition to any subscriptions they already had before )!
Netflix welcomed nearly 16 million additional subscribers worldwide in the 1st quarter of 2020. If Amazon does not communicate any figures on its Prime Video offer, OCS displays a multiplication of 3 of its usual traffic and on Canal + Series, the number of views was multiplied by 4.5 compared to February. The MyCanal platform and its offer of series, films, documentaries, magazines recorded an increase of 48% in video views.
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"We recommend more family programs, we consider that, since confinement, it's the weekend every day," says Gérald-Brice Viret, director general of antennas and programs of the Canal + group. Disney + also successfully launched on April 7 in France, as did Madelen, the platform of the INA, on a smaller scale with 50,000 subscribers since March 17. So many indicators that show how grateful we are on screens…
