WASHINGTON – The average person around the world spent nearly three hours aday in front their television last year, according to a report releasedMonday.
Eurodata TV Worldwide said that television viewing was holding up despitemore and more people watching online platforms like Netflix and Amazon.
Americans and Canadians are the biggest TV addicts, said the report,watching four hours and three minutes on average daily.
European viewers came next watching three hours 49 minutes a day in 2017,just ahead of Russia and Brazil, the data gathered from 95 countries showed.
“The length of time people watch television is holding up despite thegrowing availability of online content,” said its vice president FredericVaulpre as the report was presented at MIPTV, the world’s biggest TV marketin Cannes, France.
“There was a slight fall in TV viewing in North America and Asia, but it isstill growing in South America and in Europe it is maintaining historicallyhigh levels,” he added.
Asians watch less TV than any of the other major markets, spending twohours 25 five minutes in front of the box. In China that drops to two hours12 minutes.
– TV is not dead –
But viewing habits were also changing, the report found.
Replay services on average “added an extra eight percent to audiences” inthe 35 countries where they were measured.
And millennials and young adults were spending more time on their mobilephones, often catching up with programmes that way.
In Sweden, one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world, youngadults watched slightly less than two hours of TV a day.
Eurodata TV found that most young people who watched programmes on theInternet and on replay services were logging on for shows aimedspecifically at them.
These included reality shows and youth dramas whose audiences weresometimes more than twice as big on the internet as they were forbroadcasts.
The US and Britain remain the world’s two biggest exporters of TVprogrammes and formats, ahead of France, Germany and Turkey, whosefamily-oriented soaps have been big hits across the Middle East, SouthAmerica and the Balkans.
But the report found that there were fewer big international blockbustershows like “The Voice” than in the past.
“Local productions always go down best” in most markets, said AvrilBlondelot of Eurodata TV.
She said the big trend was for producers and TV channels to “create contentaimed a particular niche audiences (young people, women or older people)rather than look for something that tried to take in a mass cross-overaudience.”
Paul Youngbluth of the TAPE consultancy told MIPTV delegates that there wasa lot of “fake news” about the death of TV and insisted that “consumptionis not decreasing.
“New US shows like ‘The Good Doctor’ and ‘Roseanne’ show that linear(traditional) TV can still draw very high live audiences,” he added.
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