Viewing Habits Study | Young adults prefer STAT and Double Occupancy

STAT, Double occupation, Indefensible And Big Brother Celebrities are among the favorite programs of a segment of the public that seems to be abandoning Quebec television: young adults.

This is one of the highlights of an exclusive survey by the Digital Transformation Academy (ATN), presented Wednesday at the congress of the Quebec Association of Media Productions (AQPM) in Saint-Sauveur. Conducted among 1,000 Quebecers aged 18 to 24 last March, the study aimed to explore their viewing habits.

Asked to identify the local productions they had watched in the previous three months, the majority of respondents named STAT. The popular Radio-Canada hospital daily sits at the top of the ranking reserved for fiction series with 20%.

The soap opera starring Suzanne Clément, Geneviève Schmidt and Lou-Pascal Tremblay is ahead of TVA’s other daily, Indefensiblewhich 14% of respondents had checked out.

The red wristbands VAT (10%) completes the podium, followed by three offerings from Noovo: Club Soly (9%), Between two sheets (8%) and Pet (8%). Leo (8%), Completely high school (6%), Can you hear me ? (5%) and Plan B (5%) close the top 10.

In reality TV, Noovo occupies four of the top five positions with Double occupation (16%), Big Brother Celebrities (13%), An almost perfect dinner (10%) and Love is in the meadow (8%). TVA prevents a scan by housing its novelty get me out of here (9%) at the fourth level.

In variety, unsurprisingly, The voice wins with 11%, ahead of Infoman (10%), Live from the universe (6%), Masked singers (6%) and Revolution (6%).

An attachment to local content

Analyzed by Christine Thoër, full professor in the department of social and public communication at UQAM, the survey offered some encouraging news to the Quebec television community, which is desperately trying to capture the attention of young adults to ensure its sustainability. Thus, a large majority (70%) of 18-24 year olds say they are “interested” in all Quebec content. And this, even if they prefer Netflix, YouTube and Disney+ to Crave, ICI Tou.tv and Club illico to view content online.

The reasons that motivate their interest in the fleur-de-lis offer are varied. They include the desire to encourage local productions (88%) and the importance of protecting the French language (83%). The third main reason is much more practical: because their parents and siblings watch Quebec TV and they want to be able to talk about it with them (77%).

On the other hand, young adults not interested in the Quebec content offer explained their lack of enthusiasm by indicating that they preferred to watch American or foreign content (79%), that they “did not recognize in our local star-system (63%) and because they preferred big budget productions (61%).

Skeptics

The results of the study have raised a great deal of skepticism among industry players working to engage young adults. Philippe Lamarre, president and founder of Urbania, the company behind series like seem to go, recommended vigilance. “When the average age of your audience is between 55 and 60, you have to worry about audience renewal. »

To explain the presence of a title like Club Soly in the ranking of the most popular content programs with 18-24 year olds, Zita Lawson, of Encore Television, the production house behind Arnaud Soly’s offering, clarified that the comedian and his team had ” carte blanche “.

This attitude was welcomed by Mathieu Lacombe, of the communication agency Rethink. “Showing young people on TV is one thing. I think we also have to speak their language. Shows like Club Soly do it well, because we give young people plenty of room to create the content, with references they understand. Sometimes, taking older shows to try to speak to young people, it smells of designer sweat. It feels forced. »

In addition, the survey revealed that humor (54%) ranks first among the elements that attract young people in terms of fiction series, far ahead of suspense (44%) and action (43%).

Particularly popular this year, the AQPM convention ends on Thursday.