A report out this week suggests that TV viewers in the UK are now consuming more ads than ever before. This is purely taking into account actual television viewing, and not online TV, and the stats line up something like this:

• 16.7 hours of commercial TV per week on average in the first half of 2009
• that’s up 9.9 minutes on 2008, which isn’t a lot, but who was expecting it to go up?
• commercial TV is now 63.7% of all broadcast TV viewing
• that’s up 3.2% on the last five years (still only counting the first half of the year)
• the Beeb accounts for the rest, naturally

That’s good news for ITV, who had to sell their Friends Reunited site at a loss of almost £100 million, and I forget where I read it, but were also advised that going pay TV would be the best way to protect their future.

Seems as though they’re not quite on the way out just yet.