Mississippi ranks #1 state for TV watch time in 2020

The pandemic forced many people to switch from office desktop to TV screens — but exactly how much TV do people in Mississippi watch?

According to a recent report, Mississippi ranks #1 in the United States for TV watch time at 4 hours and 22 minutes. The data shows there was nearly an hour increase from last year’s watch time of 3 hours and 29 minutes.

Last year, Mississippi ranked as the #7 state for TV watch time.

Overall, Americans watched 55 minutes more TV than they did compared to last year’s report.

Mississippi increased viewership by 25% and dethroned last year’s winner, West Virginia.

Rhode Island saw a 45% increase in TV watching, jumping from 15th place in 2019 to 6th place in 2020.

Alaska watched the least TV in 2020, at 2 hours and 38 minutes — quite a change after ranking #5 for most TV watch time in 2019!

Telenovela was the most popular TV genre for Florida, Texas, and California.

Sports was the most-searched TV genre across the country.

Verizon Specials used the TV watch time data from the American Time Use Survey 2015-2019 state-level estimates to find each state’s average TV watch time.

Each state’s most-searched TV genre was then determined using search data from Google Trends over the past year. We included all 50 states in the U.S. and Washington, D.C.