UK adults watch, on average, 31 hours of TV per week, and about half of this is recorded or from an on-demand service, a survey carried out by YouGov on behalf of YouView suggests.
The survey is YouView’s first-ever census into UK television habits and was conducted online in May 2013. More than 2,000 people took part and revealed that viewers are increasingly drifting away from the traditional TV broadcast schedule, opting instead to watch programming when they want it.
One-quarter of UK adults say they now watch more TV than five years ago and, in a typical week, this amounts to about 16 hours of live TV, nine hours of recorded TV and six hours of catch-up or on-demand TV.
Not everything that is recorded gets watched, though. The average UK home records about 10 programmes per week but, on average, four of these are deleted without viewing.
For 18 to 24-year-olds, on-demand viewing accounts for almost one-third of their weekly TV viewing, as they take in 11 hours live, 10 hours recorded and nine hours on-demand.
In this same age bracket, 37pc said the ability to watch on-demand TV was very important compared to one-quarter nationally.
While 77pc of UK households still use their main television set for most of their viewing, the average home has four devices on which they can watch TV, while 26pc have six or more.
Among these devices, computers are used for additional TV viewing by 57pc of those surveyed, 14pc use a games console and 25pc use a tablet computer, with iPads being the most popular ahead of Android models.
Family watching TV image via Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock