South Korean electronics juggernaut Samsung has declared that Britain is entering a ‘second golden age of TV’ in its Smart TV Futures report, authored by the Future Laboratory.
The study analysed British viewing habits and found that we now watch 16 per cent more telly than a year ago with 55 per cent now connected to the internet through their goggle box to make the slab of glass the undisputed ‘hub of the home’.
In practice this equates to around 35 per cent of the population confessing that they could not live without bathing in flickering light each night, voraciously consuming an average 2.7 hours of the stuff each day.
Citing the ‘rituals and traditions’ now associated with the time-honoured pastime, such as live events and Saturday night sing/dance-athons the report highlighted social media as a key tool to harmonise the fractious TV landscape of online, cable and on-demand platforms.
More surprisingly Samsung claim that 65 per cent of people actually learned more about particular subjects, such as DIY and cookery, from their couch than they ever did at school.
Looking to the future Samsung foresees ever increasing interactivity being introduced over the coming decade; from personalised content to gesture control and crowd sourcing.
A Samsung spokesperson said: “For us the future is about discovery. TVs are getting so powerful that they will enable people to discover not only more of the shows and films they love, but more of anything and everything they love. We can certainly see a time where TV will shape the way we chat to our friends, shop online and control our homes. We are already offering consumers some of these features in our award-winning range of televisions and over the next decade we’ll be leading the charge into this second golden age of TV.”