PEOPLE in Britain are buying more books and watching less television than they were in the mid-Eighties, according to a survey published today.
The notion that Britons are becoming a nation of couch potatoes is disputed by the report Cultural Trends in the 90s by the Policy Studies Institute.
In 1985 the average person in Britain watched television for 27.1 hours a week, but by 1994 this had dropped to 25.2 hours despite the growth in the number of channels.
The survey by the institute, an independent non-profitmaking research organisation, shows that weekly viewing hours among the 16-24 age group rose from 17.2 to 19.6. But they dropped from 21.1 hours to 18.5 hours among children aged four to 15, while most other age groups also showed a slight decrease.
By contrast, domestic sales by British publishers increased by 21.6 per cent from £1,264 million to £1,537 million in real terms over the same period.
In cash terms at current prices, book sales nearly doubled from £948 million to £1,756 million over the nine-year period covered by the survey.
Sydney Davies, trade and industry manager for the Booksellers' Association, to which 3,200 bookshops belong, said yesterday: "After talking to our members we think that sales are pretty good at the moment." The survey also shows that despite new information sources such as the CD-Rom, public libraries were as popular as ever.
More people went to the theatre, opera and ballet but attendances at classical concerts and performances of jazz and contemporary dance were down.
More than 80 per cent of homes had at least one video recorder in 1995, a 10 per cent increase over five years, and of the top 20 videos sold, 19 were of cinema films.
The exception was Riverdance - The Show, a video recording of the Irish music and dance show which was a huge hit in London.
Animated films were among the most popular bought for home viewing, with The Jungle Book leading the field from its fellow Disney productions The Lion King and Fantasia.
The most popular rental video film over the survey period was Four Weddings and a Funeral, closely followed by Dirty Dancing and Basic Instinct.
People watched an average of 30 films each in 1986. By 1995 the average was two films a year at the cinema, two a week on television and one every three weeks on video - a total of over 120 a year.
BBC Radio 1 continued to be the most popular radio station with 23 per cent of the population listening in 1995, although its share had fallen by 13 per cent since 1992.
