Ofcom’s Media Nations 2026 report landed last week, and one insight stood out straight away: older audiences are changing how they consume media, but they’re not abandoning traditional media for digital. They’re doing both, and increasingly at the same time.
For years, the industry has split audiences into tidy categories. Usually, this looks like linear TV, press, radio, and print media for older audiences and streaming, social, and digital for younger ones. This report makes it pretty clear that this split doesn’t hold up, particularly for older consumers, who are quickly becoming some of the most hybrid media users out there.
Here’s what caught the attention of our media planning account director, Richard Wilkinson, and what it means for how we plan media at HUB.
TV still leads, but on-demand is catching up
Live TV isn’t going anywhere. Adults aged 75+ watch an average of 6.5 hours of video a day, and broadcaster content makes up 88% of that viewing. If you’re planning media for an older audience, linear TV still deserves serious attention.
But live TV is no longer the whole picture. Broadcaster streaming services (BVoD) are growing steadily among older viewers too. This isn’t eating into linear TV viewing; instead, it’s sitting alongside it. Adults aged 55 to 64 now have the highest weekly reach for BVoD at 57%, and the 65 to 74 and 75+ groups are the fastest-growing viewers year-on-year.
YouTube is becoming a genuine habit for 55+ audiences
It’s not just TV. According to Ofcom’s 2025 Online Nation report, this hybrid pattern also shows up in social media. Among smartphone users aged 55+, YouTube climbed from the 5th most-used app to the 4th, with monthly reach growing from 57% in May 2024 to 60% in 2025. That makes it the second most-used social platform for this age group, only beaten by Facebook.
If your social media plan for older audiences stops at Facebook, longer-form video is well worth a second look.
Trust still sits with traditional media, especially for news
Where this all gets interesting is trust. Older audiences still lean heavily on television for news, with 90% of those aged 75+ getting their news this way. Print, radio, and social media still play a role, but television remains the main source.
Even as online news consumption grows, traditional channels are seen as more trustworthy. 65% of UK adults using broadcast TV and 66% using printed newspapers rate them highly for trust, compared with 39% for social media or video-sharing platforms and 51% for search engines or AI tools.
Online news consumption among 55+ audiences is climbing fast, rising from 76% to 79% year-on-year, according to Ofcom’s 2025 Online Nation report. And when you look at where this age group actually spends time online, news sites make up nearly half of their top ten visited websites: BBC, Reach PLC, Sky, Mail Metro Media, and News UK for 55-to 64-year-olds, and BBC, Reach PLC, Mail Metro Media, and Sky for those 65+.
This all serves as a great reminder that traditional and digital PR work best when they work together.
Our take at HUB
Too many strategies still treat older audiences as either “traditional” or “digital”, when the data shows they’re both. The opportunity isn’t persuading older audiences to go digital. They’ve already done that. The real opportunity is building omnichannel strategies that reflect that.
That’s the approach we take at HUB. We work to understand how people actually engage with media – not how we assume they do – and build campaigns around that. By understanding audience behaviour, we can help our clients connect with the right people through the right channels. And ultimately, that will always lead to stronger engagement and better performance.
The future of media planning isn’t about choosing between old and new. It’s about understanding how audiences are blending the two and using that insight to build smarter strategies.
If you’re looking to build a media strategy that reflects real audience behaviour, get in touch with the team at HUB to see how we can help.
