Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Americans Have Fewer TVs On Average Than They Did In 2009 (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the parlor-walls dept.

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.

3 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Per Capita Numbers? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't that what he's saying? Monitors don't have ota TV tuners. More people are using monitors in place of TV's. OTA TV therefore, is on the decline. The article missed the forest. Streaming, as we all know, is become our future.

    Indeed. I suspect the tuner-TV combo is close to its final generation. We have a TV, but it's probably our last. All watching is done on computers. We have a HD-Homerun that tunes and dumps the video onto ethernet, which is enormously more useful. The youngsters seem to watch everything on phones. Presumably the children of the youngsters will be watching TV on their 5th generation iWatches.

    It'll only take 2 generations to die off and the TV will seem like a quaint throwback and OTA TV transmission will be switched off and the spectrum sold to the highest bidder.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  2. Re: Per Capita Numbers? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He enjoys one thing, you enjoy another. News at 11.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Digital encryption by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Ever since my cable provider moved from ananlog to digitial and then to encrypted digital, I've reduced the number of TVs in my house by 3. Once digital encryption arrived, I had to start paying each month for one "digital outlet" and one set top box for each and every TV. That came to a charge of $25+ per month per TV, just because digital encryption was initiated.

    .
    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.