Americans world's biggest TV addicts watching four hours a day

The average person around the world spent nearly three hours a day in front their television last year, according to a report released Monday.

Eurodata TV Worldwide said that television viewing was holding up despite more and more people watching online platforms like Netflix and Amazon.

"The length of time people watch television is holding up despite the growing availability of online content," said its vice president Frederic Vaulpre as the report was presented at MIPTV, the world's biggest TV market in Cannes, France.

"There was a slight fall in TV viewing in North America and Asia, but it is still growing in South America and in Europe it is maintaining historically high levels," he added.

And millennials and young adults were spending more time on their mobile phones, often catching up with programmes that way.

In Sweden, one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world, young adults watched slightly less than two hours of TV a day.

Eurodata TV found that most young people who watched programmes on the Internet and on replay services were logging on for shows aimed specifically at them.

These included reality shows and youth dramas whose audiences were sometimes more than twice as big on the internet as they were for broadcasts.

The US and Britain remain the world's two biggest exporters of TV programmes and formats, ahead of France, Germany and Turkey, whose family-oriented soaps have been big hits across the Middle East, South America and the Balkans.

But the report found that there were fewer big international blockbuster shows like "The Voice" than in the past.

"Local productions always go down best" in most markets, said Avril Blondelot of Eurodata TV.

She said the big trend was for producers and TV channels to "create content aimed a particular niche audiences (young people, women or older people) rather than look for something that tried to take in a mass cross-over audience."