TV viewership statistics

Justin says that the IPA did an interesting "touchstone" survey with fine-grain detail which found that people watch TV for an average of 4.2 hours a day. That's 29.4 hours a week, which is almost exactly half of the 58 hours I estimate they have available for leisure activities.

He also intimated that the overall figures (which suggest that viewership is holding up well) may mask important changes in the detail. For example, we have an ageing population with more people in older age groups. Older people in general watch more television. Younger people are watching less.

We also have to be careful to distinguish between (a) watching broadcast TV live and (b) viewing televisual material in a variety of ways (e.g. time-shifted, IPtv, etc)