General English Level 3 V 3
UNIT 02 Entertainment TOPIC 01 Watching TV
Reading READING 04 What do people watch?

Read the following newspaper article about TV viewing habits.

Surprise Results from TV Survey

It's official! We're watching less TV than a year ago. KNR Statistics have released the latest figures on our TV viewing habits and they show some surprising results.

Last year the average person watched 23.2 hours of TV a week. This year the average person watched only 20.7 hours of TV per week.

And here are some more surprising facts:
  • Women watch two hours more TV per week than men.
  • Parents watch more TV than their children do.
  • The older you are, the more TV you watch.
And we don't watch as much sport as you might think!

We spend only 5% of our time watching sport, but 38% of our time watching drama shows and 27% of our time watching news and current affairs programs.

So why are we watching less TV? Well, really, we are just changing one screen for another. While fewer people are watching TV, more and more people are using the Internet. In 43.6% of households at least one person regularly uses the Internet.

Graph 1
What we watch



Graph 2
Number of TV viewing hours per week by age


screen average habits
to release to give us
viewing watching TV
household the people who live in a house

Now go to 05 READING What do people watch?- task.