For almost quarter of a century Freeview has enabled viewers to access television from the nation’s biggest broadcasters almost anywhere in the UK for no charge.

Despite it still being the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on 10m main household sets, those same broadcasters are now calling for the service to be switched off in as little as eight years’ time.

They point to a paradigm shift in viewing habits, driven by the rise of smart TVs, the rollout of superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming revolution, meaning more and more people are getting their programmes via the internet rather than their aerial.

Lynette from Kent. Photograph: courtesy of Silver Voices

However, campaigners argue that millions of people who still rely on Freeview will be left behind. Many do not want the extra cost of a monthly broadband subscription – never mind the big bills for a pay-TV provider such as Sky or Virgin – or prefer the easy-to-use interface.

Lynette, 80, says she found Freeview “essential” and did not like the streaming service she tried. “I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” she says. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”

She is one of nearly 100,000 signatories so far to a “save Freeview” online petition started by campaigning group Silver Voices earlier this month. Lynette says she worries the government is going to decide to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.

A report for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) estimated that by 2035 there will still be 1.8m homes dependent on Freeview. A separate analysis by the media regulator, Ofcom, found such households are “more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and geographically in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

Freeview is jointly owned by the UK’s leading public service broadcasters (PSBs) – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – through Everyone TV, which also runs the Freesat and Freely platforms.

Bring it down … a TV aerial in the Peeblesshire area of the Scottish Borders is taken down. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

After two years examining options for the future of the free-to-air service, the DCMS is due to deliver its verdict soon. It is looking at three options put forward by Ofcom: an expensive upgrade to Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining it as an extremely limited service with just a minimum of core channels from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5; and a “switch off over the 2030s”.

The PSBs have coalesced around the latter option, arguing that 2034 is the most logical point to axe digital terrestrial television (DTT), over which Freeview is broadcast, as that is when their contracts with the network operator Arqiva come up for renewal.

By then the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to have slumped from its peak of almost 12m in 2012 to less than 2m, making the returns from showing TV commercials to such a small audience uneconomic compared with the broadcasting costs.

In July, Ofcom published a report that recognised a “tipping point” within the next few years when it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to bear the costs of DTT.

However, others have raised concerns over whether internet-based TV is able to deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily TV updates during the Covid pandemic, as reliably as the universally available DTT system.

Last October, the body representing the UK radio industry, which uses many of Arqiva’s masts, said a switch to internet-only TV could force some stations to close as distribution costs would soar without PSBs sharing the load.

“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, the founder of Silver Voices, adding that he had “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum process as he felt it was “heavily biased” in favour of the option to shift to streaming.

However, the Future TV Taskforce, which speaks for the PSBs on Freeview, argues a shift to internet TV by the middle of the next decade actually offers the “potential to close the digital divide once and for all”.

“We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” said a spokesperson. “And that every viewer in the country can continue to access the content and services they value.”

She added that as Freeview homes decline, the increase in distribution costs for broadcasters could lead to cuts in programming budgets.

The figure for 1.8m homes reliant on Freeview in 2035 is based on offering no form of support to help them, and the debate boils down to how many can be successfully converted to internet TV by then.

Digging into the figures, 1.1m of those households are expected to have broadband by that point but not use it on an online TV service. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to still not have a broadband connection.

Veterans of the five-year nationwide digital switch-over process that ended in 2012 – within which the analogue TV signal was turned off after 76 years, and further spurred the rise of Freeview – remember similar fears being raised about a “TV blackout chaos” for vulnerable viewers.

There were serious concerns over about 6% of households, identified by the DCMS at the time as “digital refuseniks” who would never convert to digital TV. However, a switch-over help scheme – including dedicated household help and a national ad campaign featuring a robot called Digit Al voiced by Little Britain star Matt Lucas – resulted in a near seamless transition.

Tim Davie, the outgoing director general of the BBC, has already made clear he believes the corporation should not be funding any similar scheme in the run-up to Freeview disappearing.

Youtube is seen as the big winner in the switch-over to broadband-based TV viewing Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA

New research for Sky, conducted by Oliver & Ohlbaum, estimates that if an awareness campaign and action on digital inclusion well in advance of a 2034 switch-off would mean only 330,000 households would ultimately need to be helped to make the change.

According to audience research body Barb, 7% of UK households no longer even own a TV set, instead choosing to view video and TV content on other devices.

If the UK’s public service broadcasters succeed in pushing the transition to internet TV there are those that question whether it might end up being a pyrrhic victory of sorts, as Silicon Valley rivals increasingly win over viewers in the digital age.

In December, the number of people watching YouTube in the UK on TVs, smartphones and tablets overtook the BBC’s combined channels for the first time, although the figures from audience measurement agency Barb are only based on a minimum of three minutes viewing.

Such insights will be harder to come by in future, after it emerged on Wednesday that YouTube had sent legal letters blocking Barb and its research partner Kantar from accessing the viewership session data. Nevertheless, it seems clear the trend is only going in one direction.

“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” said one senior executive in the TV industry. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”