DUBAI: Television viewership during Ramadan goes up by 78 percent in the Middle East, a recent YouGov survey commissioned by Netflix found.

The poll asked residents in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt about their changing behaviors and looked at how people spent their time during the Islamic holy month.

Findings showed that peak viewership time in region shifts to 2 a.m.-5 a.m., with viewers spending on average an extra three hours a day watching TV shows or movies. That adds up to 90 extra hours of TV time over 30 days — equivalent to about 60 movies or 180 30-minute shows.

The rise is due to later bedtimes, the study suggests, as many will stay awake to the earlier hours of the morning for suhoor — when Muslims eat their last meal of the day before fasting.

In Saudi Arabia, 50 percent of those who took part in the survey said they went to sleep at 5 a.m.

Over half of survey respondents from the Kingdom (52 percent) spent two to three hours of TV time with family and friends, with the top genre among those being comedy, followed by family drama and history.