Less than a third of residents in Ukraine use digital TV

29.3% of residents of Ukraine enjoy digital TV (including 5.7% – digital terrestrial, 70.7% – analog). These are the results of a survey conducted by the Independent Association of Broadcasters supported by the International Foundation "Renaissance."

Users of digital TV are mostly men who have one TV set in their household. The most loyal audience of digital TV are people under 25.

The vast majority of respondents (87%) had heard that in 2015 Ukraine would switch to digital broadcasting. The main source of information was television.

According to experts, the information campaign devoted to the transition to digital TV can be considered to be the most extensive in recent years. However, the effectiveness of the campaign is ambiguous. "Evaluating the campaign on digital terrestrial television in terms of obtaining the effect of awareness, it is clear that this campaign is very successful, because the awareness is 87%, but when evaluated in terms of the effect of action, or more precisely – the effect of buying & using, we see that the figure is only 3%. Those are the ones who have bought set-top-boxes and for whom a digital signal broadcasting is the major one" – Vitaly Horduzenko, the director of the Research Center of the Independent Association of Broadcasters said.

Almost 50% of users of digital terrestrial TV (2.8% of all respondents) have purchased set-top-boxes themselves, paying an average of 550-600 UAH per unit. Another 41.2% have received them from the state and 1.5% of respondents said they had received devices from MPs.

The survey was conducted in July 2013 among residents of cities with a population of over 50 thousand, aged 14-65 years. Sample size is 2014 respondents, the error is 2.2% at a marginal category close to 50%.