It seems at the moment that every few months, the ‘YouTube vs TV’ debate will flare up afresh as a new dataset on the UK’s media habits is released, prompting strong headlines proclaiming either the death of TV or that there’s been a massive exaggeration of the strength of YouTube. Last year, Barb’s launch of viewership data for YouTube channels on TV sets prompted the latter, while Ofcom’s ‘Media Nations’ report sparked the former.
The debate has started to resurface today, prompted by a Deadline article analysing Barb’s reach data for the last few months of 2025. The data shows that YouTube’s total cross-screen reach in UK TV and broadband households surpassed that of each individual UK broadcaster in the last three months of the year. In December, YouTube’s total reported reach sat at 51.9 million, compared to 50.9 million for the BBC.
Nuance often goes out the window in the initial reaction to these stories, so VideoWeek has taken a broader look at Barb’s data to explore what it does and doesn’t show.
YouTube Has Overtaken the BBC…
First of all, the headline figure. As Deadline and others have reported, YouTube’s total reach has surpassed that of any other individual channel or service measured by Barb. Alongside the figures already given for YouTube and the BBC, ITV’s total reach in December was 45 million, Sky’s was 37.2 million, Channel 4’s was 42.2 million, and Channel 5 and Paramount’s combined reach was 37.3 million. It’s not clear for how long YouTube has held a lead over the BBC, since Barb only started reporting data on YouTube last October.
As noted by Deadline, Barb counts reach across all individuals aged 4+ who watch at least three consecutive minutes of content on each service. Deadline reports that using a higher threshold of 15 minutes, the BBC had a UK reach advantage over YouTube of roughly six million.
… but Broadcasters Collectively Remain Ahead
For those keeping score, broadcasters as a whole still reach more people in the UK than YouTube by itself. Total monthly reach for all broadcasters in December sat at 56.4 million. So in the ‘YouTube vs TV’ debate, TV still has the edge.
Thinking about the figures in that way, however, shows some of the folly behind the debate. It seems a bit arbitrary to group together all broadcasters operating in the UK as one homogeneous entity. But then YouTube itself is a massive collection of individual channels and creators, including the broadcasters themselves and the IP they’ve created. As is often said, it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
BBC Maintains Top Ranking for TV Sets and Daily Minutes
Alongside reach, Barb also shows the average daily minutes viewers spend on each service, as well as each service’s share of total identified viewing. On both of these counts, the BBC still comes out on top.
In December, BBC viewers spent an average of 48 minutes and six seconds on the platform, compared to 41 minutes and 27 seconds on YouTube. The BBC’s share of total identified viewing reached 19.75 percent, above YouTube’s 17.02 percent.
Looking at viewership on TV sets specifically — often pitched as a core part of the TV experience by TV’s proponents — also presents quite a different picture. Here, YouTube’s total reach is 37.5 million. This places it behind the BBC (50 million), ITV (44.7 million), and Channel 4 (42.2 million), and marginally ahead of Channel 5/Paramount (37.3 million) and Sky (32.2 million).
YouTube’s 8.73 percent share of total identified viewing on TV sets actually places it ahead of big broadcasters including Channel 4 (5.4 percent) and Sky (6.8 percent). But it’s still significantly behind ITV (12.1 percent) and the BBC (19.2 percent).
This is a very different picture from the US, where Nielsen’s The Gauge reports have ranked YouTube as the top individual distributor in terms of TV set viewership since last February.
Reach and Minutes Only Take You So Far
Overall though, Barb’s data is a reminder that headline stats around reach and viewing minutes will only take you so far. Those figures don’t tell you anything about the content which is being watched on those services, how well that content is resonating with those audiences and what cultural impact it is having, or how loyal audiences are to individual shows or channels. These are all factors which should matter not just to the broadcasters themselves, but to the advertisers working with broadcasters’ commercial teams.
As one example — Netflix’s cross-screen reach in December was higher than ITV’s. But in the four weeks of December where viewing data is available, ITV had 20 episodes which made it into one of those weeks’ top 15 most viewed programmes, while Netflix had four. Neither of those is inherently better or worse, they’re just different from an advertiser’s perspective. If you think about reach purely from a total viewership perspective, Netflix had the edge. But if you think instead about the ability to drive reach with individual shows and series, ITV comes out on top.
Another example is TikTok. Its cross-screen reach in December was 15.4 million, according to Barb, putting it below all of the UK’s PSBs. But marketers in the UK won’t be deterred by those figures as they see unique and specific value in that platform, which goes beyond pure reach (or even pure reach among specific demographics). As media planners know well, while the headline-grabbing stats we see around UK media and TV in particular aren’t irrelevant, they’re only one small part of the picture.
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