Despite the spreading of the internet, television remains the most widely used medium in Germany. In fact, the average use further increased until last year. In 2014, the average German watched around 4 hours of TV per day. Second most used is radio broadcasting, slowly losing importance but still remaining an essential part of the media menu of the Germans.
In particular in the morning hours, Germans listen to the radio. Newspapers are used less extensively; in 2014 on the average people spend only 23 min per day reading newspapers. However, it is still important considering newspapers are mostly used for informational purposes and not for entertainment.
The internet usage is steadily increasing. Compared to other Western countries, Germans seem to be more reluctant – more than 20 % don’t use the internet at all or only rarely although there is almost complete internet infrastructure coverage.
Interestingly and due to media convergence and mobile media use, overall media usage significantly increased – the average German spends more than 10 hours per day consuming content from any type of media.
Interview: Prof. Dr. Martin Emmer (Professor for Media Studies at Freie Universität Berlin):
Q: But where do we get such detailed data about the German media usage from?
Basically, there are two types of research: First is more case study orientated dealing with small groups of people, exploratory research.This is something that is done for example by companies which try to develop new formats for example for TV shows. They usually do kinds like that; focus groups for example, qualitative interviews or things like that.
Then there is that highly standardized research, which usually is used for evaluating market shares of media. That’s necessary for developing the “currency” for selling advertisements and refunding production. And then third is scientific research. That is something that we are doing at university.
We use a lot of methods, often a mix of methods in order to answer specific research questions.