The television set defies the growth of the tablet

Research from Thinkbox has found that the majority of people still watch programmes on their television sets (Getty Images)

Despite the rise of tablet and mobile viewing, the television set isn’t obsolete yet. New figures show that 98.5% of all viewing was watched via a television set in 2013.

Just 1.5% of television viewing was on other screens such as tablets, laptops and mobiles, according to the figures released by television marketing body, Thinkbox.

The average viewer watched just over three hours, 55 minutes of TV a day during 2013. Of that figure, just three minutes, 30 seconds a day of live stream viewing was conducted via PCs and mobile devices.

However the audience ratings body Barb has yet to include all viewings from on-demand services such as the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, Sky Go and 4OD in its measurements and the Thinkbox figures are likely to under-estimate the amount of non-TV set viewing.

Other figures suggest that a quarter of television viewers are now watching their favourite dramas on catch-up services. The New Year’s Day episode of Sherlock became the most-watched programme after initial broadcast ever.

The drama gained an extra 3.5 million viewers from recordings and on the BBC’s iPlayer, beating Downton Abbey to become the highest catch-up audience in history.

Viewers don’t wait long to catch up with programmes they have missed. Thinkbox said 81% of all timeshifted viewing, on services such as Sky+ is watched within two days of recording.

Thinkbox said that linear or “live” TV viewing was down by nine minutes a day during 2013, partly due to good weather, encouraging people to go out.

The World Cup this summer is expected to boost linear viewing. Commercial TV accounted for 68% of linear viewing, up from 66% in 2012.

Thinkbox expects the average level of recorded and playback TV viewing to settle at around 15-20% of total linear viewing. Commercial TV increased share of linear viewing from 66% to 68%. The number of TV adverts watched up 1.6% on 2012; a growth of 10.4% over the last five years.