Germans watching more than 5 hours of video and TV each day

Media Usage 2018: Germans are using audiovisual media for more than nine hours each day

BERLIN — People are consuming more and more audio and audiovisual media content. During 2018, audiovisual media usage by Germans (aged 14 and over) rose to over nine hours a day for the very first time. Radio and television continued to be by far the most frequently consumed types of media, while a further increase was registered in the use of audio and audiovisual media content via the internet. This emerges from VAUNET´s Media Usage Analysis published today by the Association based on third-party sources.

Dr. Harald Flemming, Managing Director of VAUNET: “Audiovisual media are becoming more and more important in people´s lives and are therefore also gaining increasingly higher social status. In view of their public value offerings, well-founded journalistic content and wide range of entertainment formats, they are excellently suited to fulfilling this responsibility and offering viewers, listeners and users extensive value added.”

Frank Giersberg, Member of the Board of Directors and responsible for Market and Business Development at VAUNET: “Using audiovisual media is by far the most popular pastime among Germans. People, even very young ones, still invest a particularly large amount of their free time-consuming classic radio and TV. Added to this is the use of media in the internet, with audio and video content already accounting for about three quarters of online usage.”

The projected figures for daily video and television use in 2018 amounted to a total of 5 hours and 12 minutes (2017: 5 hours and 6 minutes), the major part of this still arising from television consumption, which reached 3 hours and 54 minutes across the entire population (aged 14 and over) in the year 2018 (2017: 3 hours and 58 minutes) [1]. Audio usage amounted to 3 hours and 52 minutes (2017: 3 hours and 52 minutes). Germans over the age of 14 spent 3 hours and 12 minutes (2017: 3 hours and 12 minutes) listening to the radio on workdays [2]. On average, media offerings in the internet were used by 14 to 69-year-olds for 1 hour and 37 minutes in 2018 (2017: 1 hour and 29 minutes). Of this, around 71 minutes (2017: 58 minutes), namely 73 percent, were meanwhile attributable to the use of online videos and music streaming/MP3. The cumulative daily consumption of other forms of audiovisual media, such as cinema, video games, DVD/Blu-ray and CDs, amounted to 47 minutes (2017: 50 minutes) [3].

In the course of an average day, radio was the most frequently used medium from morning until early evening, with television being the most-consumed medium and recording the widest reach during the evening from about 18.00 h onwards. Internet usage remains relatively stable throughout the entire day [4].

In 2018, 92.2 percent (2017: 91.8 percent) of Germans aged 3 and over watched television on a regular basis [1], 93.8 percent of adults from the age of 14 listened regularly to the radio [2] and 81.2 percent of people aged 16 or more made regular use of the internet [4]. The relevant daily reach amounted to 67.6 percent in the case of television, 77.6 percent for radio and 52.3 percent for the internet.

[1] Working Group for Video Research (AGF) in cooperation with the consumer research organisation GfK
[2] Working Group for Media Analysis (ag.ma), ma 2018 Audio II and ma 2017 Radio II
[3] SevenOne Media / forsa – Media Activity Guide (MAG) 2018 and 2017
[4] VuMA Touchpoints 2019
[5] Working Group for Online Research (agof), Daily Digital Facts 2018