Over the course of just a few months, the coronavirus has changed how consumers in China digest media. As adults are taking additional precautions and continuing to stay home, they are spending more time with both digital media and TV. We increased our projections for time spent with digital in China and lowered those figures for print.
In total, adults will spend 6 hours, 58 minutes (6:58) per day consuming media, a roughly 4-minute increase from our March 2019 forecast. We anticipate that 2:45 of that time will come from traditional media (TV, print, radio), and the remainder will come from digital.
“Because people in China have been staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we expect increases in time spent with TV and digital media in 2020, as people seek out news and entertainment; but the impacts don’t stop there,” eMarketer forecasting analyst Brian Lau said. “Quarantines have pushed adults in China to spend even more time on internet-connected activities and has accelerated the shift toward digital. We expect this behavior to continue well after the pandemic.”
Television
We have increased our estimates for adults’ average time spent watching TV in China to 2:30 in 2020, up from 2:25 expected in our March 2019 forecast. Although time spent with TV will grow by 1.3% in 2020, it will once again decline in 2021, by 3.0%, as routines return to normal.