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Americans Have Fewer TVs On Average Than They Did In 2009 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Americans went from having an average of 2.6 TVs per household in 2009 to having 2.3 TVs in 2015, according to survey data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA). The data comes from the agency's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which has been conducted periodically since the 1970s to understand American energy use. The 2015 survey included 5,600 respondents who were contacted in person and then given an option to follow up by mail or online. A fine-detail report on the survey results is due to be released in April 2017. The latest data shows that in 2015, 2.6 percent of households had no TV at all, a jump from the previous four surveys in 2009, 2005, 2001, and 1997 in which a steady 1.2 to 1.3 percent of households didn't own a TV. The 2015 data also showed that the number of people with three TVs or more dropped in 2015. That year, 39 percent of households had more than three TVs, whereas 44 percent had more than three TVs in 2009. Interestingly, the number of households with one or two TVs increased in 2015 to 58 percent, from 54 percent in 2009.
Yes, the drop in numbers of TVs per household is interesting. However, isn't the average household size also dropping?
I have it upon good authority that they also have less buggy whips.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
FTFS:
How is that interesting. The whole article is that the 3+ television category went down. How is it interesting, or even not tautological, that the other two categories (0, 1-2) go up?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
As people have bigger TVs I suspect they want to watch primarily on the one big one if they're watching on a full fledged TV, and portable devices like phones and tablets (and to a lesser extent laptops since battery life has gotten so good) have killed the idea of having a smaller TV in other rooms: Why bother when you can just carry your iPad in? I suspect the same effect has killed TV ownership completely for a lot of people who don't have room in their house for a large TV (or don't watch it enough to decide to spend on that when they can access content on their other devices).
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I know when I upgraded from pre-digital capable TVs to the new HD TVs... I went way down in TV ownership. I disposed of 5 older TVs, and replaced it with one new TV. Once the last 5 years, I've since upgraded that new TV, and put the older one in a second room.
My parents, and many of my friends are the same way. They went from a TV in every room, to one main one... and as the main one was upgraded the others have slowly moved to other living spaces.
First they mention a decrease of in households that have 3 TV. Then:
Interestingly, the number of households with one or two TVs increased in 2015 to 58 percent, from 54 percent in 2009.
What we learned today is that over a period of 5 years, some people sold an extra TV and others bought an extra TV.
lucm, indeed.
OK, I didn't read TFA. But the boob tube is the boob tube regardless of the physical dimensions of the screen.
The HD screen on my smartphone held 12" from my face is about the same size as my 55" TV, and I already have the smart phone in my pocket virtually everywhere. I can stream and watch most content on it. Why would I need more TVs? To watch cable TV that is chock full of commercials and forces me to watch what they want me to watch on their schedule? The entire cable TV industry is dying a slow death. They would be dead already except for the fact that they are a monopoly and they also have a monopoly on high speed internet in most markets...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
My interpretation is different. The kids are on their iPhone, the mom is on Pinterest and the dad is talking to fake women on Ashley Madison.
lucm, indeed.
What do you do with that?
I'd love to know how much video is consumed per household? Back in 2009, you had a TV in the family room and then probably one in the master bedroom and one in the kids' bedroom(s). Now if you've got a family of 5, you've probably got 5 devices that can all stream video (phones, tablets, tv, roku/chromecast... ).
I'd be American's are watching far more video today than ever before. Very few parents advocate having their 2yr old watch TV, but plenty of them believe $kids_app will make their 2yr old more successful in getting into Stanford or MIT.
I see plenty of people watching their phones, Computers, and iPads instead of a TV. I would think that number would reconcile the difference much more than bigger screens.
That all said, disposable income for lower and all ranks of middle class is considerably down over the last decade. That means less toys and gadgets around those same houses. The Middle class has always been the source of fluid income in the economy, and starving those people has caused a big stagnation in the country.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Everyone has one or two personal screens on top of the TVs in the house, less need for so many TVs
Twinstiq, game news
How about the fact that cable companies now require you to rent a cable box for each TV?
I doubt that. As more companies embrace "Seattle hundreds," we have less time with family. I know I only see my kids about three times a week, much less have time to watch TV. The last prime-time show I could watch regularly was Friends in 1996.
What we're really seeing here is the real life long-term damage of Wii Sports. People got it Christmas of 2006 and immediately destroyed their TVs by accidentally chucking the controller at the TV. Everyone saw the pictures, had a good laugh and Nintendo covered it all up by muddling search results by naming their new controller attachment the "Wii Nunchuk" which they knew would be dubbed the "Wii Chuck" and thus misdirect everyone looking for information about chucking their Wii controllers at the TV. So as you can clearly see, Nintendo is leading the charge on TV genocide. I'd tell you why they are commit such heinous war crimes but I'm afraid you just aren't ready for that level of truth. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Wowzers, you talked to 5,600 people, out of 320,000,000+ in this country.
You link to EIA info that shows a +4% increase in one-two TV owners.
What the hell?
My Vizio P75-C1 75" 4K "Home Theater Display" legally can't be called a "TV" because it doesn't come with an ATSC tuner. The FCC requires all "televisions" to come with a tuner since 2007.
watching tv is stupid
àfàSààà£à±às
I have a tv in the living room that gets used every day and a tv in the bedroom that hasn't been used in several years.
It's an old CRT type tv I don't really have any need for it anymore but it's a TV/DVD/VCR/FM radio combo unit and surprisingly all the functions still work (the tv too w/ a converter box) so I haven't been able to convince myself to get rid of it since it all still works....and it happens to have the last known working VHS player in it in the family.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
From my understanding, parents begin buying their children tablets as an all-in-one replacement device for TVs and desktop computers. All these people buying mobile games have to be coming from somewhere.
It even goes for emulators when I see people on forums asking about running them on tablets or cell phones. (Anyone with a console or desktop would have access to more/better games, especially on desktop where you can emulate almost anything.)
You are vegan, practice yoga, and "don't even own a television". You are attending a social event and talking to a member of the opposite sex whom you find attractive. Which of the three things in the beginning sentence do you mention first?
People are watching media on their phones now....and there's a lot more phones. So we need less TVs. This really isn't complicated.
No, my room mate doesn't have a tv, but she walks around all day, going from room to room, holding and watching "her programs" on an iPad clone. I doubt she's seen nature in over ten years (other than the images on her little toy). In fact she's in the kitchen right now cooking something with mayonaise and sugar watching "shitz creek". (I asked).
Americans have gone from an average of 2.6 to 2.3 TVs in a six year period but what kind of error bars are on that?
Let's think this through...
- TVs last a long time so even though someone might upgrade on a TV the old one might still be working when it's replaced.
- That TV that's moved from the primary viewing location to it's new home might not even be used, or not used enough to matter. I've seen people put TVs in basements, garages, and spare bedrooms just because they wanted a new TV but didn't want to throw away one that still worked. So it's put some where where it could be used but probably won't.
- There was the switch to digital TV in 2009 that made a lot of TVs obsolete. So, those rarely used TVs that were in basements and spare bedrooms got tossed but never replaced.
- TV programming quality took a dive, people are now watching more stuff from the internet using computers and such.
- The economy took a dive. People that might have got a new TV just because they wanted one a decade ago will now not be so willing to spend money on such luxuries.
- While people are watching less TV and instead spending that time watching internet based content the devices to connect the TV to the internet are still quite new. Given time I expect this to change.
So, to me this looks more like a statistically insignificant change in American TV viewing habits. I believe that all we are seeing is the lag in the "recovery" from people having to toss out their analog TV sets in 2009. As people get more money (from an improving economy and people building up wealth as they age), they'll start to put their still working but moderately outdated TVs into basements and spare bedrooms again. There's more 4K content, more internet based content, and increasing wealth to drive TV purchases. I expect in five years or so we'll see the average number of TVs in American households to get to the 2009 level again.
I think back to the years prior and for a long time people just tended to have two or three TVs. There would be one in a living room, perhaps in the kitchen, maybe the parents had one in their bedroom. If a family had more than that then it'd be a wealthy family with a large house, and they'd have more TVs because they had more rooms to accommodate them. The typical American house hasn't changed much over the decades as far as layout and room usage goes. Houses may have become larger but the number of rooms didn't really change.
Had there been a larger change than this, and it not so close to the digital broadcast TV change, then I might see this as more interesting. The switch to digital TV, a poor economy, declining TV programming quality, all add up to slightly fewer TVs owned. Had the TV ownership increased in this time then I might be surprised.
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I suspect that is going on here is that with the advent of Netflix and tablets we now have most people using tablets as nothing more than a small portable TV that will also show them their Facebook feed. For the average suburbanite slob it has it all, your trashy, fake TV and your trashy, fake friends!
Wasn't expecting to, but rather enjoyed Schitts Creek
I think that people didn't throw away older analogue TV sets until the switch off . So older TV with only a RF antenna input so almost all of black and white TV sets where thrown away. I remember stacks of b/W and older TV at the recycle factory.
So people kept say a b/w TV set in guests rooms and when the TV became useless they didn't bought another TV set because was not really necessary.
I hear you. When I was offered the position I am now I knew my time with my wife and kids would be severely limited. I would have to move and spend weeks or months away. The pay was simply too good but I could not uproot my family and could not bear to spend so much time away. I had to choose. So I killed my wife and kids, hid the bodies in the woods and moved. I have a great career now. Never looked back. Sometimes it's a little weird, like when I was browsing through old pics and found an old pic of my wife and my date was curious and I just held back the tears and told her she was somebody I used to know. Hard to let go. But overall life is good.
haven't read the article, but did they take smartphones and tablets into account which replaced a lot of tv's (I would never watch a movie on a tablet/smartphone, but I know a lot of people do that). So TV's have just been replaced with tablets/smartphones/laptops/computerscreens.
Thanks for nothing.
That's basically what you get when the quality of the junk you produce is LOWER than what amateurs on YouTube crank out.
What do you get on TV today? Pseudo-reality soaps that are way more pseudo than reality, about forgettable idiots that can't even act, let alone be interesting. Reports and even more soaps about the life of wannabe-celebrities nobody with more than a brain cell could give a shit about. Now mix into that some other kinda-reality shows, from court TV to high speed chase TV and you know what's on 90 of said channels. The other 10 "high quality" TV networks bring you sitcoms with jokes that were funny 20 years ago, assembly line series with lackluster production values that networks don't give half a shit about if they mix up shows so they don't make sense in the sequence they're shown (with some reruns mixed in for good measure), and as the prime time feature you get the 100th rerun of some old movie you don't care about anymore since the late 90s.
And all that interrupted by commercials every other minute that it feels more like the constant stream of commercials is occasionally interrupted by programming.
And you're wondering why people throw their tube out and instead reach for alternative sources of entertainment? Are you serious?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I developed tinnitus (while technically young) from watching crap on the phone, while my desktop PC was out of service.
Also by holding it non-stop for an hour, you're harming yourself with bad postures while cutting on your physical exercise.
Won't do it ever again. Worst time in my life.
In 2009, most of us still had working CRTs. Now we have replaced old sets with, typically, one bigscreen that we splurged on.
Myself and my wife watch more content on our PC's and tablets than TV. I doubt highly I would spend much on a TV in the future. Not ready to say I do not need one but I certainly won't be buying a expensive one. I still know some who still have older CRT TV's. Yes, I also know a couple people obsessed with HD and spend thousands on 4K TV's, but not many.
We used to have TVs in most rooms of the house - bedrooms, workout room, living room, kitchen. First they had rabbit ears and then direct feed from the cable (back when some cable channels were analog). But the shift to all digital cable has meant that any TV without a cable box won't receive anything (especially since the all-but-demise of OTA analog broadcasting in my area, and I get squat with a digital antenna), and the cable company wants $14/box/month, so all those TVs that used to get a handful of channels and were good enough are now good for nothing, and we are down to exactly two TVs when we used to have seven.
I guess I'm below average as we only have two: one in the family room and one in the bedroom. Technically we have a third one in the game room, but it's not hooked up to cable so you can't watch TV on it and it's just for playing games. We used to have one in each room, but we realized that we rarely watch TV anymore so we just got rid of them to make more room and we haven't bought a new TV in almost ten years. Heck, the one in the family room is a 36" HD CRT and it works great. We just don't see the need to drop money on a 50"+ 1080p TV since there's nothing worth watching anyway.
But still, most of the streaming is done to handheld tablets, or phones or laptops or netbooks. My 14 inch chromebook screen at 3 feet covers the same range as the 42 inch across the room. Unless there is more than one person watching the same thing, it does not make sense to cast anything to the TV. Given the full keyboard on chromebook and unusable screen key board in Roku there is no real reason to mess with it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You jest, but imo you're not too far from the truth. Former Intel CEO Andy Grove said WAAAYYYYY back in 1998
"interactive data delivery was "a war for eyeballs," between large-audience broadcast TV and the power of the Internet to give people what they wanted when they wanted it-albeit at less than broadcast quality in most cases. "
With improved internet speed, wireless and graphics capabilities, the eyeballs have gone from TV to the computer monitor.
.
I had to cut back on the number of TVs because of those increases due to digital encryption. $20+ per month for a set-top box, what a rip off.
i don't watch tv at all.. all my news/movies/music comes from either phone or laptop.
TV is too controlled.. i like to select what i want to see.
Precisely. The headline makes it sound like having fewer TVs is a bad thing!
Aint got time fo dat.
There are now three times as many (free) over the air channels, in my area than before the digital switch. Combined with streaming services like NetFlix, Amazon... I don't see much reason for reduction in screen numbers due to eliminating the expense of additional set-top boxes.
I do find it VERY "odd"/inexplicable that my son does seem to prefer to watch 480p video on a 22" computer monitor or 240p video on his phone rather than HD or UHD on a 70" 4K screen. But, whatever floats your boat.
it is possible to actually talk to your family
Not everyone has an unlimited cellular plan.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hear the latest episode is.... up
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> President Trump really delivered tonight!
Yes, but most of us already have enough fertilizer. Feel free to dump it on your lawn, though, as long as you can stand the smell of all that bullshit.
Back in 2009, I had 4 TV's hooked up in my house. Now I only have 3, and just two of them have cable boxes attached to them.
The big reason for this was the increase in fees that the cable and telco companies charge for "HD" cable boxes. The old SD cable boxes only costed about $3 a month each, but the HD ones cost about $9 a month. If you want an HD DVR, that's more like $12 a month. The price inflation on the rental prices for this equipment is insane. You don't really have a choice about getting them, either, as almost every channel over the cable line is encrypted now. If you have a telco TV service like FIOS, there really IS no way to connect your TV directly to the cable line.
When you see those $180 cable bills showing up, you start thinking about how many TV's you REALLY need. Besides, I can just hook a projector up to my laptop if I want to watch something on Netflix.
There is less and less difference between a TV and a monitor nowadays.
A modern TV can make a decent computer monitor and a computer/tablet/smartphone can be used the same way as a TV.
That people buy less screens with built-in tuners doesn't mean much.
Due to the obnoxious, in-your-face proliferation of Blacks and Black-oriented TV programming and movie releases, you'd think TV ownership would drop to near zero.
I have a good friend who's wife is proud to say they have no TV in the house.
That being said, they stream so many TV shows that it's not funny.
Not having a TV has gone from being a stigmata in the 60s to a sign of arrogance in the 90s to being a sign of penny pinching in the modern age.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
After a couple years of my living room being centered around a screen that was black 95% of the time, I gave away my TV when I turned 24 (almost 30 now), haven't looked back. Scripted content is mostly interesting for the plot, which is fine to have going on a phone while I'm cooking. If something is truly a television "event" I'll watch it at a friend's place. Sports at the bar. Amongst the 8-10 closest friends I have it's been perfectly fine if only half of us have a TV in our house. We're all into other stuff.
I honestly got tired of being lied to.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
An intolerant billing spike, or economy shake up might re-ignite TV's appeal. Stop putting all your eggs in one basket. Any additional form of communication is quite handy! I read so many articles every week telling of how the Web is being breached on this site. Yet very few see the need for any backup or alternative. This narrow thinking has got to stop! ...I can't help to wonder, is this just a hidden greedy lunge for bandwidth? - Is it a way to funnel all people to one choice, where they can be watched and monitored?
Precisely. The headline makes it sound like having fewer TVs is a bad thing!
For broadcasters (OTA) and Cable Companies it is. For everyone else, it's not.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)