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TV Ownership Declines For Second Time Since 1970

Posted by samzenpus on from the blow-up-your-tv dept.

bs0d3 writes "Almost every year, the estimated number of U.S. households owning TV sets goes up. Until now. This year, for the second time since 1970, TV ownership has gone down; by about 1%. TV ownership among the key adult 18-49 demo also declined even steeper, down 2.7 percent and percentage of homes without a TV is at the highest level since 1975. The reasons behind this appear to be online media content and the recession."

2 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obligatory from The Onion by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I own two TVs. I use one for DVDs, Netflix Instant, and OTA NFL games. The other is collecting dust in my bedroom, I really should have it recycled.

    So while I own them, I don't watch much TV--at least not until it shows up on Instant. Because of that, and because of everyone else being totally obsessed with TV, it is very hard not to point out that I have no fucking clue what they're talking about when they tell me about "New Show 131". If you just nod your head and pretend they catch on quickly and ask "WTF?"

    You're an idiot either way for not watching the "idiot box." :(

    There's two TVs in this household too, but both are only used as display devices for PlayStation 3, PC and my tablet. None of them are used for watching actual TV - shows or such. Why? Because most of what is there is just plain crap and more annoying than entertaining. Watching TV is a terribly passive experience so if I'm going to sit down and just stare at the screen then I atleast expect it to be worth my time. Alas, if there even is a good TV show going it's always pushed to really late hours, it's shown only once a week, and there's only ever at most one, single good show running at any given time. Never more than one.

  2. Article is bereft of real numbers by mad-seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Household that do not own a TV set? Or households that own a TV set but don't have cable, OTA tv? In our case we dropped cable several years ago, still have OTA TV thanks to an antenna on the roof of our condo, but consume the vast majority of content through a computer hooked to the TV. So we own a TV, but according to Neilsen's rules maybe we don't own a TV? Maybe we just own a huge monitor? Maybe we don't qualify to be a Nielsen Family so we don't count?