Weekly time spent watching TV in Canada 2016-2020, by age group
The average weekly time spent watching television in Canada from September to December 2020 was 23.7 hours a week among adults aged 18 or above, and those over the age of 55 watched the most television per week at 38.1 hours. Meanwhile, teens watched just over 11 hours each week.
The ability to watch time-shifted TV, as opposed to live viewing, has brought about services such as Subscription Video-on-Demand. It is believed that in 2019 there were 14.6 million people subscribing to Netflix in Canada. The popularity and accessibility of programming on such platforms also introduced the notion of binge viewing, defined as watching at least three episodes of a TV show in one sitting. Among Canadians, such consumption patterns were again more common for Millennials: 78 percent of young consumers in the country between the ages of 18 and 26 were binge watching TV shows in the fall of 2015.
Traditional vs. digital media consumption in Canada
According to the most recent data, Canadians spent 581 minutes a day with major media, which is close to ten hours of daily media time. Taking a deeper look at the specific media split, on average, adults in the country spent 294 minutes with traditional media, and the largest portion of time – 298 minutes – consuming digital media of all sorts in 2019.Online video users in Canada
In 2018 it was measured that 14 percent of the Canadian population watched TV exclusively online. In 2015, studies conducted among Canadian consumers revealed that cord-cutting was significantly higher among Canadian Millennials, with more than half of this group indicating a lack of a regular TV service, such as cable, satellite or over-the-air subscription. In contrast, the same was true for only three percent of consumers aged 65 and older.The ability to watch time-shifted TV, as opposed to live viewing, has brought about services such as Subscription Video-on-Demand. It is believed that in 2019 there were 14.6 million people subscribing to Netflix in Canada. The popularity and accessibility of programming on such platforms also introduced the notion of binge viewing, defined as watching at least three episodes of a TV show in one sitting. Among Canadians, such consumption patterns were again more common for Millennials: 78 percent of young consumers in the country between the ages of 18 and 26 were binge watching TV shows in the fall of 2015.
