Advertisement

Study reveals that Britons watched two months of television in 2011


On average the people of our fair nation spent the equivalent of two whole months in front of the television last year, it has been revealed.

The annual Telescope report from the TV Licensing company details the television habits of the nation each year, and the 2011 results are quite staggering.

97% of us watched live or catch-up television each week on a traditional TV set, watching an average of 28 hours.

[Related story: Most-watched TV programmes of 2011 revealed]


Estimates put our daily TV intake at 1hour and 50 minutes but this was proven to be wild wishful thinking, with the real figure coming in at 4 hours and 2 minutes.

Speaking to ICM research, the people behind the report, Oliver Shingler of South Wales said, “I pretty much make my own TV schedule. I’ll watch live when I can, but some of my TV viewing is catch-up - I like to skip the ads! I record in HD to watch later or use services like BBC iPlayer and 4oD.

“It suits my lifestyle because, after the kids go to bed, I can watch what I want when I want between 7pm and midnight, without missing out on my favourite dramas.”

The report also looked at a relatively new trend they have dubbed “Chatterboxing”.

It refers to talking about a TV show on a social media platform (Facebook or Twitter) while watching it. 46% of people aged 18-24 admitted to taking their viewing experiences online with another 43% of 25-34-year-olds and 31% of 35-44-year-olds.

By tracking the amount of tweets sent about any given show, the report found that 346,216 tweets were composed about the ‘X Factor’ final results show and 163,218 were sent about the 2011 Wimbledon men’s tennis final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

A third of under-25s said that chatterboxing helped them enjoy a TV show even more.