Germany

[DE] AGF publishes 2025 German TV and video review

IRIS 2026-3:1/23

Christina Meese

Institute of European Media Law

On 8 January 2026, AGF Videoforschung, a company that conducts impartial research in the German TV and video sector, focusing particularly on audience measurement, published its annual TV and video review for 2025. The review concludes that consumption of audiovisual content is characterised by an increasingly diverse media landscape and changing usage situations. While video content is increasingly spread across different distribution channels and providers, linear television remains a core component of the media market, especially for current, socially relevant and live content.

AGF Videoforschung continuously tracks the use of video content in Germany on a quantitative basis and analyses the data collected. This is mainly done using an audio matching process in which 5 400 representatively selected German households are equipped with systems that continuously report on their television usage. In the audio matching process, sound signals on the television are captured as audio patterns, compared with audio patterns from TV channels that are continuously recorded on a server and thus assigned to programmes. AGF also uses router technology to measure streaming usage in households. In 2025, Amazon Prime Video was actively integrated into the AGF measurement system for the first time via server-to-server integration, meaning that Prime Video's ad-funded VOD content has been reported in AGF tools since November 2025.

These surveys, which cannot cover all areas of audiovisual content usage given the large number of online distribution channels, show that television consumption remained high in 2025, but declined slightly. On average, 55.5% of viewers aged 3 and over watched television every day, with an average viewing time of 158 minutes. Compared with the previous year (171 minutes), this represents a 7.7% drop in overall audience figures. Among 14 to 49-year-olds, the average viewing time was 67 minutes, compared with 79 minutes in 2024. In contrast, information-based programmes (news bulletins, magazine shows, documentaries and talk shows) accounted for around 36% of total linear TV consumption in 2025, slightly more than in previous years. The most popular programmes included Tagesschau, the ARD's daily evening news bulletin, while the news stories that attracted the largest TV audiences concerned the German parliamentary elections, events linked to the Trump administration and the death of the Pope. The most watched individual programmes included an edition of Tagesschau broadcast on the day of the Bundestag elections, two matches involving the German women's national football team at the European Championships and two episodes of ARD's crime series Tatort, although more 14 to 49-year-olds watched the Eurovision Song Contest and a TV debate on the Bundestag elections than the crime series.

In light of the limited coverage of the TV and video review, it is also worth mentioning the survey-based platform study, which examines TV distribution channels and the results of which were published by AGF on 21 January 2026. The study reports that internet-based reception of TV content is continuing to grow, while use of traditional distribution channels (cable, terrestrial and satellite) is steadily declining. Connected TV is becoming standard. The use of YouTube and social media platforms is also increasing, with TV providers managing to hold their own on such platforms.

In contrast to linear television, the 2025 TV and video review states that the average viewing time per day for video streaming increased from 6 to 8 minutes overall, which corresponds to a rise of around 21%. According to AGF, such an increase can be seen in the 14 to 29, 30 to 49 and 50+ categories. However, it should be noted that the AGF figures only include certain streaming providers that are predominantly based in Germany (ARD, ZDF, RTL, ARD/ZDF, Sport1, Joyn, Sky, Axel Springer, DAZN, Amazon), but not international VOD providers such as Netflix, Disney+ or HBO max. The most streamed services were the ARD Mediathek (1 234 403 924 minutes), the ZDF Mediathek (1 016 266 506 minutes), RTL+ (747 704 649 minutes), Joyn (510 394 187 minutes) and Amazon Prime Video (268 665 632 minutes). The Amazon Prime figure is remarkable in that it only includes November 2025 onwards, while the other figures relate to the year as a whole.