The popularity of PVRs such as Sky+ has seen the average amount of television watched by UK viewers rise to more than four hours a day
The average amount of television watched by UK viewers each day hit a new high in the first half of 2011, driven by factors including people watching more live TV to avoid online spoilers.
Viewers are also watching more non-live TV on personal video recorders such as Sky+.
UK viewers notched up an average of four hours and three minutes a day of TV watching in the six months to the end of June, an increase of 51 seconds a day year-on-year, according to a report published on Monday by TV marketing body Thinkbox.
Viewers were exposed to an average of 47 ads a day – up from 45 in the same period last year.
Thinkbox, which uses figures from TV audience measurement organisation Barb, said that a number of factors had fuelled the rise in overall viewing.
Factors include viewers watching more live TV to avoid spoilers from the proliferation of people tweeting, participating in Facebook groups or updating their personal status and the posting of clips of shows on YouTube.
The same social media tools have helped contribute to the growth in viewing as audiences increasingly engage in "two screen" TV watching – participating in online discussions and comments on a laptop or handheld device while watching shows.
Other factors include the increasing ubiquity of personal video recorders such as Sky+ and Freeview+, on-demand TV and innovations such as high definition, which have made television viewing "more magnetic".
According to Barb, non-live "time-shifted" viewing accounted for 9% of UK's total TV viewing in the first six months – up from 7.1% in the same period last year.
In households that own a PVR – 47% of the total – time shifting accounted for 14.7% of total viewing, up from 13.7% in the same period last year.
However, Thinkbox believes that the four-hour-a-day mark might well be the peak amount of live TV that people will watch.
"We've been saying for a while that linear TV viewing couldn't keep breaking records forever and that it had to stabilise at some point," said Lindsey Clay, managing director of Thinkbox. "It appears that this is now happening. On-demand TV is expanding total TV by adding to this stable linear base."
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/15/viewers-watch-more-tv-2011-thinkbox
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