Chilean National Television Council (CNTV) published the results of its report ‘TV Consumption 2018’, which shows that Free-to-Air TV (FTA)  was the most watched media in the country. According to the report, last year, each person consumed an average of 1,286 hours of TV, which means approximately 3, 31 daily hours average. All figures mentioned responds to general TV turning on. (Lorazepam)

FTA recorded a 767 hours  average consumption per capita in 2018, and pay TV had 457. In comparison to 2017 figures, Chilean TV total consumption decreased in a 7%. That year, each Chilean watched 1,380  TV hours (about a 3.46 hours per capita average). The report also explains that, in the last five years, the most pronounced decrease in consumption belongs to FTA, which fell by 18% since 2013. Pay TV, both in cable and satellite, also decreased its subscribers, but with a more recent fall: since 2015 it declines in a 12%. Channels Mega and Chilevision lead FTA audience in 2018. The first joined  32.4% of the audience, and the second recorded it in 21.7%.

‘People are watching less TV hours. There is a change in Chilean society, which is also reflected in the amount of TV consumption hours. The most FTA captive audience is in elderly people, because they have it as someone who is together with them , but it has also reduced its watchers in that segment, because many people today work. TV watching has declined, but, despite that, FTA is still the one that strongly leads the market’, said Catalina Parot, CNTV’s president. But,  despite the decline, the report establishes that 85% of Chileans use the TV as the main way to get informed. The report also indicates that, according to data from the Telecommunications Subsecretary, in Chile there are 1.29 mobile phones per inhabitant, and 31% of data traffic corresponds to streaming video. The number increases to 40% in fixed devices and computers.

CNTV is also preparing a legislative proposal to control the Internet. 18,838 Law  establishes that the entity must ‘ensure TV services to run in a correct way, operating now or in the future, in the national territory’. The aim  is to present a proposal -which does not have an established date until now- for the CNTV to extend its attributions and supervise channels online contents. ‘It must be regulated in a way that it does not affect freedom of expression and that the CNTV does not regulate platforms where contents are generated outside FTA, which is no longer their field’, Parot said.