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The Guardian
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
YouTube most popular first TV destination for children, Ofcom finds
Children are now heading to YouTube from the moment they turn on the television, in the latest sign of the video platform's migration from the laptop to the living room. YouTube is the most popular first TV destination for generation Alpha, according to a comprehensive survey of the UK's viewing habits by Ofcom, the communications regulator. One in five young TV viewers aged from four to 15 turned straight to the platform last year. The survey showed Netflix close behind. While BBC One was in the top five first destinations, children were just as likely to choose BBC iPlayer. YouTube's increasing presence on televisions is not just down to the very young. In a gradual cultural shift, viewers aged 55 and over watched almost twice as much YouTube content last year as they did in 2023, up from six minutes a day to 11 minutes a day. An increasing proportion of that – 42% – is viewed through a TV set. Overall, viewers spent an average of 39 minutes a day on YouTube in 2024. The platform is now the second most-watched service in the UK, behind the BBC but ahead of ITV. Those aged 16 to 24 watched just 17 minutes of traditional, live television a day last year. Only 45% of them tuned into any broadcast TV in an average week, down from 48% in 2023. YouTube has evolved to become a closer competitor for traditional broadcasters. Half of the platform's top-trending videos now resemble the content of mainstream broadcasters, including long-form interviews and gameshows. The rise of YouTube is presenting a major challenge for public service broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, who have to decide how much of their content to place on the platform. While doing so helps them reach new and younger audiences, YouTube also takes a huge chunk of advertising revenue. There is also a risk that putting shows on YouTube ensures viewers spend less time on a broadcaster's own platforms. 'Public service broadcasters are recognising this shift, moving to meet audiences in the online spaces where they increasingly spend their time,' said Ed Leighton, Ofcom's interim group director for strategy and research. 'But we need to see even more ambition in this respect to ensure that public service media that audiences value survives long into the future.' Ofcom has already told 'endangered' broadcasters they should work with YouTube to place more of their content on the platform, but it has also said this must be done 'on fair commercial terms'. Michael Grade, Ofcom's chair and a former head of Channel 4, said ministers should look at new laws forcing YouTube to give content from Britain's public service broadcasters more prominence. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Channel 4 has gone the furthest in placing its content on YouTube. Executives insist it is only helping them reach new viewers, rather than cannibalising its own platforms. ITV also announced a new deal with YouTube at the end of last year. While there is a live debate within the BBC over how much content to place on YouTube, more of its coverage is set to be featured on the site. Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, told staff this week that the head of the corporation's new AI department would also be responsible for 'driving growth off platform with a focus on our YouTube strategy and younger audiences'. The amount of time people are watching video content every week is holding steady. Overall, the average person watched four hours, 30 minutes a day at home last year, just a minute less than the previous year. Content from traditional broadcasters still accounts for most viewing, making up 56% of the total. However, the proportion has fallen significantly, from 71% in 2018. YouTube is also the most popular online audio service, used by 47% of UK adults each week, followed by Spotify, used by 36%. Podcasts are now increasingly streamed on YouTube – a sign of its impact right across the media.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pik-Sen Lim obituary
The Malaysian Chinese actor Pik-Sen Lim, who has died of cancer aged 81, was one of the most recognised east Asian faces on British television and, despite being cast in stereotypical roles during her early decades on screen, enjoyed a 60-year career. Her highest-profile part came as the Chinese student Chung Su-Lee learning English at an adult education college in the ITV series Mind Your Language (1977-79). For Lim, taking a leading part in a successful sitcom – which attracted up to 18 million viewers – was a double-edged sword. 'I was forced to say 'flom' instead of 'from' and 'evely' for 'every',' she said. 'It was pretty corny. I had to learn pidgin English.' The programme was broadcast in an era when television sitcom was prone to amplify racial stereotypes. Alongside an Italian chef, Spanish bartender, Greek shipping agency worker, Japanese electronics expert, French au pair, a Sikh, a Muslim and other students of English as a second language, and with Barry Evans starring as Jeremy Brown, their teacher, Su-Lee was the Chinese embassy secretary, a dedicated communist and kung-fu enthusiast, always carrying around Mao Zedong's Little Red Book and quoting his anti-western sentiments. Michael Grade, then an ITV executive, commissioned Mind Your Language, but dropped it after three series, admitting it was racist. 'It was really irresponsible of us to put it out,' he said. Nevertheless, the sitcom was revived by other executives for a further series in 1986, although Lim did not reprise her role and not all ITV regional companies screened it. Soap operas had a much better record of representing members of minority-ethnic communities. Shortly after leaving drama school, Lim had an early opportunity to portray what is believed to be the first Chinese nurse on British television. She joined Emergency – Ward 10 in 1964 as Kwei-Kim Yen, a staff nurse at Oxbridge general hospital, who had a relationship with a doctor and stayed until the final episode in 1967. On leaving the serial, she appeared in the sitcom Sorry I'm Single (1967) as Suzy, a Chinese student from Hong Kong, one of three women living in a bedsit in a converted Hampstead house that was also home to an eternal student played by Derek Nimmo. Later came regular roles in Spearhead (1978-81) as a soldier's wife, and the short-lived soap Albion Market (1985-86) as Ly Nhu Chan, a Vietnamese stallholder selling wickerwork and baskets. She was born Lim Phaik Seng in George Town, Penang (then in British Malaya, and now part of Malaysia), during the second world war when it was occupied by Japanese forces. Her mother, Tan Siew Chin, was from a poor local family, while her father, Lim Cheng Teik, of Chinese origin, owned a successful rice mill. During her postwar childhood, Lim attended the Light Street convent school, where she was known as 'Pixi', and she was entranced by black-and-white films and visits to Teochew operas. She mounted her own productions in the family's dining room, acting with her brother, two sisters and cousins in front of relatives and neighbours. Lim's parents had plans for her to study at Cambridge University, with the aim of a career in law or accountancy, but she shocked them by dropping the bombshell that she was leaving home at the age of 16 to train at the Lamda drama school in London. She lived with her brother and changed her name from Phaik Seng to Pik-Sen Lim: 'My English friends were calling me 'fake' and I told myself, 'This just won't do.'' Her professional stage debut came in Euripides's Greek tragedy The Bacchae (Mermaid theatre, 1964) and she starred in the East German TV drama The Girl from the Jungle (1964), about Malaya's struggle for independence. In 1968, after her run in Emergency – Ward 10 ended, she married one of its scriptwriters, Don Houghton, who later created the Scottish soap Take the High Road. Houghton wrote the 1971 Doctor Who serial Mind of Evil, in which Lim played Captain Chin Lee, a member of the Chinese delegation at a world peace conference who, coming under the power of the Time Lord's arch-enemy, the Master, heightens tensions with the US. Lim also translated some lines into the Chinese language of Hokkien for a conversation between a delegate and Jon Pertwee, as the Doctor. While amassing dozens of one-off character parts on television, Lim appeared in half a dozen films. Her roles included an assistant to the Thought Factory boss acted by Bette Davis in Madame Sin (1972); the wife of an Asian diplomat (played by Burt Kwouk) in Plenty (1985), starring Meryl Streep; and a performance alongside Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English Reborn (2011) that led one critic to note that the 'best of the physical shtick here is the recurring appearance of an Asian granny called 'the killer cleaner' (Pik-Sen Lim), whose vacuum sweeper comes with an array of lethal attachments, including a chainsaw'. Her later TV parts included Aladdin's mother in the mini-series Arabian Nights (2000) and the regular roles of Chien, another student of English as a second language, in This Way Up (2019-21) and Queen Marina in the boarding school fantasy Vampire Academy (2022). She also voiced Grandma in the animated children's series Luo Bao Bei (2018). Lim and her husband were divorced shortly before his death in 1991. She is survived by their daughter, the actor Sara Houghton, a granddaughter, Phoebe, and her sister Quee Lin Lim. Pik-Sen Lim (Lim Phaik Seng), actor, born 15 September 1943; died 9 June 2025
