Television viewers spent an average of 1.89 hours a day watching television in July, 2.4 minutes less than in the same months last year, the Broadcasting Authority said.

In its audience assessment for July, it said that an average of 176,700 people aged 12 and over listened to radio while an average of 189,800 persons followed at least one television station.

Bay Radio, it said, remained the most popular station with 25.9 per cent of all radio listeners followed by ONE Radio (13.62 per cent) and Radju Malta (10.07 per cent).

But although Bay Radio attracted the highest amount of listeners, their total average hours of radio listening to this station was 2.23 hours. One Radion listeners, on the other hand, spent an average of 3.58 hours tuned to this station.

Based on the amount of time listened and number of listeners, overall, Bay Radio still ranked first with 20.59 per cent of all audiences, but ONE Radio’s share increased to 17.42 per cent.

TVM remained the most popular station with 34.45 per cent followed by One (15.9 per cent) and Net TV (8.05 per cent).

Overall 61.44 per cent of all viewers followed a local station while the other 38.56 per cent followed a foreign station with Canale 5 (6.99 per cent), Italia 1(five per cent) and RAI 1 (3.27 per cent) being the most followed stations.

Taking all the audiences for all the weekdays and the daily average television audience share attained overall, the rankings were still the same with TVM having an audience share of 27.31 per cent; followed by One with 16.8 per cent, and Net TV with 9.12 per cent.

Of the foreign stations, Canale 5 ranked first with 8.4 per cent, followed by Italia 1 with 5.79 per cent, and Discovery Channels with 2.66 per cent.