World TV Day

Action Dominates Movie and TV Viewership

November 21 is World Television Day. Created by the United Nations back in 1996, it was intended to recognize the growing impact television had on informing and educating the general public as well as connecting people around the world and influencing decision-making.

To mark it, we are looking at different nations’ viewing habits. Data from a survey by Statista’s Consumer Insights shows how TV audiences have varying preferences based on geography. Where the action & adventure genre was particularly popular among Brazilian, Indian, U.S., French and German viewers, dramas were most popular in South Korea. In the China and Italy, comedy was the most popular genre of movies and TV shows, while Japanese audiences favoured anime.

In the U.S., the next most popular genres were comedies (61 percent), dramas (52 percent), followed by thrillers/mysteries/crimes (49 percent) and horror (46 percent).

Description

This chart shows the most popular TV content genre, by country (% of respondents saying they watch the respective genre).

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Most liked television genres in Japan as of September 2021
Which TV show genres do you watch?
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Preferred TV content by genre in the U.S. as of March 2026
Genre breakdown of the top 250 TV programs in the United States in 2017
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Coronavirus and TV and movie viewing: most watched movie and television genres in the United States as of March 2020, by age group
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Most popular television genres in Germany in 2025

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