AMERICANS WATCHING LESS TV, NIELSEN SAYS.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Those who blast television for creating a generation of sedentary folks just got some new ammo:

According to a survey of TV watching from Nielsen, the typical household watched an average of seven hours and 15 minutes of TV a day last season.

Actually, that's a fall-off of about five minutes a day from the viewing levels for the 1995-96 season. Still, it's up just over an hour a day from the daily viewing average in 1976-77.

Fact is, for the last 15 years, the average daily TV viewing figure has been around seven hours.

Viewing levels peaked last year, when households kept their TVs humming for an average seven hours and 17 minutes per 24-hour period.

The lowest average daily viewing level was set during the 1949-50 season, the first year recorded, when household viewing averaged four hours and 35 minutes a day. Of course, with TV in its infancy, there was much less to watch and far fewer channels to choose from.

Average daily viewing broke the five-hours-a-day mark during the 1954-55 season. It cracked the six-hour barrier during the 1969-70 season. And viewing first averaged seven hours a day during the 1983-84 season.