21 November 2016 – Today is
World TV Day, the UN’s
celebration of the global
cultural impact of television.
Today, like every other day,
billions of people will together
spend billions of hours
watching TV, talking about it
and sharing it. To mark World
Television Day, TV
companies from around the
world have compiled facts
and stats to bring the scale
and popularity of TV to life as
it continues to live at the heart
of the world’s media
consumption.
AUSTRALIA
TV reaches 16 million Australians every day, who watch a total of more than 4 billion minutes of
broadcast TV every day. In fact, Australian households are 30% more likely to have a TV set than a
barbeque.
CANADA
Canadians watch 130 million hours of TV every day – that’s the equivalent of four Super Bowls. What’s
more, the average TV campaign in Canada delivers an amazing 317 million impressions.
UNITED KINGDOM
In 2016, the average viewer in the UK will have watched over 1,300 hours of TV – the equivalent of
watching all seasons of Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards more than 10 times
over. In addition, every night in the UK there are 17 million conversations about TV advertising.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TV reaches 210 million people every day, who collectively watch 840,000,000 hours of TV per day. If
you stood all of TV’s daily viewers one on top of the other, they would stretch all the way to the moon.
GERMANY
Germans watched an average of 223 minutes of TV per day – or 16 billion minutes in total: That’s 30,000
years of TV in one day!
FRANCE
Every day in 2016, 43.5 million people in France tune into TV on a television set. With the average daily
audience of 2015, you could fill the Stade de France 558 times.
ITALY
The total time Italians spent watching television in 2015 is equivalent to the time it takes to play 1,032
football matches, to bake 61,911 pizzas or to brew 222,878 cups of espresso.
SPAIN
A whopping 33 million Spaniards watch TV each day. You would have to fill Real Madrid’s home stadium
408 times to get the same reach with any other medium.
POLAND
In Poland, 25 million people tune in each day for an average of 4 hours and 18 minutes – totaling a
mind-boggling 483,883,433 daily views.
318 stadiums would have been necessary to fit all Poles watching the Poland-Portugal game of the Euro
2016.
PORTUGAL
8.3 Million people watch television daily in Portugal. That’s twice as much as Cristiano Ronaldo’s
followers on Twitter.
SWEDEN
The most-watched program in 2016 – the final of the Eurovision Song Contest – was viewed by 3.6
million people, or four out of every ten Swedes.
FINLAND
3,679,000 Fins watched an average of four hours of TV each day (2015). That means that in average,
the equivalent of over 6 million hockey games are being watched on TV by Fins daily.
THE NETHERLANDS
TV reaches 11.2 million people daily who watch a total of 49 million hours every day (2016). You would
be a multi-billionaire if you received one Euro for every hour watched by the Dutch in 2015 (18 billion
hours).
SWITZERLAND
The most-watched program in 2016 – the Switzerland v. France match during Euro 2016 – reached
2,206,890 viewers, or three times as many Swiss people as there are cows in Switzerland. With this
number, you could also fill the biggest stadium in Switzerland 57 times.
BELGIUM
With the average national daily audience in Belgium, you can fill 76 times Camp Nou, the largest stadium
in Europe.
BRAZIL
So many people tune in in Brazil – 132.5 million watch daily – that the average minute rating in primetime
is equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom (64.8 million).
CHILE
Over 5 million people watch television every day in Chile. With the figures of one day you can fill the
National Stadium of Chile (Julio Martínez Prádanos) 105 times.
COLOMBIA
This number reaches 13.5 million people daily in Colombia. That's 48% more than Sofia Vergara's
followers on Twitter.
PERU
16 million in Peru in one week. With this number you can fill Machu Picchu every day for over 17 years.
Combining a day in Chile, Peru and Colombia equals the number of people who have visited the Rio
Carnival in the last 35 years!
CHINA
The Chinese watch an average of 251 minutes of TV per day (2015), and in 2014 created 3,277,400
hours of TV content.
Of course, viewership is only part of TV’s success story. The other is the countless roles it plays in our
lives, whether it’s sharpening the world’s focus on major issues, providing a platform for freedom of
expression and cultural diversity, nurturing education or – perhaps most importantly – uniting people
around once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Have a happy 2016 World Television Day! More information at www.worldtelevisionday.com