More time with TV than work?

In the past year, Australians spent more time watching television than working, according to new research, but only because figures include retirees and teens before employment.

Almost 20 million Australians aged 14+ each had 8,784 hours to spend this year— totalling 173 billion hours in 2016.

Roy Morgan research of employment, media, leisure activities and travel reports we watched 18.7 billion hours of TV, compared with a cumulative 17.7 billion hours at work – each over 10% of the country’s time.

In a normal week, 93% of Australians watch TV (and so average 1,023 hours each of viewing over the full year), while 59% of us have jobs (averaging 1,511 hours per employee).

Listening to radio took up 15.1 billion hours in the past 12 months. 87% of people tune in to radio during the week, listening to an average of 881 hours over the year.

At home, our online time added up to 13.6 billion hours – plus another 6.2 billion hours spent actively online at work, school, and everywhere else. All up, the 94% of Australians who go online during the week have spent an average 1,068 hours using the internet in 2016 -which strictly speaking is higher than TV anyway.

Michele Levine, CEO – Roy Morgan Research, says: “To understand fully what nearly 20 million individual Australians 14+ get up to, it’s often better to zoom in and identify patterns and averages among smaller demographic, geographic and psychographic segments – however sometimes you also need a truly macro view to put everything in perspective.

“Considered as a whole, Australia spent 11% of 2016 watching television – and only 10% at work. 9% of all time was spent listening to radio, and almost 2% reading newspapers and magazines. If you factor in eight hours’ sleep a night, the country spent a third of its time consuming these traditional media.

“As well as the incidence of frequency of participation in a huge range of leisure activities, Roy Morgan also measures the visitation to different types of retail stores. Our recent State of the Nation report revealed that Australians together made almost 1.5 billion visits to department and discount stores, hardware and homeware stores, clothing and music stores, and newsagents. This makes retail visitation the clear number one most common activity, ahead of going out for food or drinks.”

Roy Morgan Single Source, October 2015 to September 2016. Sample = 50,634 Australians 14+