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Television set to dominate 2011: Deloitte

Television is set to dominate the media this year despite rising competition from new digital entertainment, according to a global report by Deloitte.

The consultancy expects television advertising revenue to continue to outpace all other media in 2011, arresting concerns that the 30-second advertising spot is in structural decline.

In 2011, aggregate television viewing will likely reach 4.49 trillion hours with the total global audience expected to grow by 40 million to 3.7 billion viewers, driven by growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, India and China. The report predicts 140 billion extra hours will be watched by audiences this year.

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However, the report also warns that smaller content producers may struggle to create global formats  – such as the popular Strictly Come Dancing series (Dancing with the Stars in the US and Australia) which allow producers to tap these new markets, and have difficulty creating high-definition content.

Overall TV viewing per person is forecast to rise slightly to 3 hours and 12 minutes per day, which compares favourably to 15 minutes per day spent on social network sites (based on Nielsen data measuring Facebook use in the US, UK, Australia and Brazil) and 33 minutes per day spent on the Internet by each US citizen.

While more than half of US and UK audiences will use a digital video recorder (DVR) in 2011, Deloitte predicts this will have little impact on advertising.

"While DVRs provide the technological capacity to skip ads, the majority of DVR owners are likely to continue to watching the vast majority of their television live," the report said. "TV ad rates may go up or down for various reasons this year but DVR penetration probably won't be one of them."