Washington, Dec. 15 (Reuters): Projections culled from US Census Bureau surveys indicate that per capita time spent with the Internet will exceed time spent reading newspapers for the first time this year in America.

In its annual feast of number crunchers, the bureau says Americans will spend nearly 10 hours a day watching television, surfing the Internet, reading books and listening to music this year. They will spend two-and-a-half hours listening to radio and a half hour listening to recorded music. The rest of the 10 hours will be spent reading newspapers, looking at the Internet, playing video games and reading other media. Americans spend about a half an hour per day on each activity.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007, which was released today, also reveals that Americans drink about 4 litres of soft drinks a week, along with 2 litres each of milk, bottled water, coffee and beer. All of which may help explain another figure in the pages of the 1,300-page book of tables and statistics: About two-thirds of Americans are overweight, including one-third of whom are obese. Industry groups provided the information on media usage. They projected Americans will spend an average of nearly four-and-a-half hours daily in front of the television in 2006, or 1,555 hours in all. Some 97 million Internet users sought news online in 2005.