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When Did TV Watching Peak? (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader writes: With Netflix and Amazon Prime, Facebook Video and YouTube, it's tempting to imagine that the tech industry destroyed TV. The world is more than 25 years into the web era, after all, more than half of American households have had home Internet for 15 years, and the current smartphone paradigm began more than a decade ago. But no. Americans still watch an absolutely astounding amount of traditional television.
In fact, television viewing didn't peak until 2009-2010, when the average American household watched 8 hours and 55 minutes of TV per day. And the '00s saw the greatest growth in TV viewing time of any decade since Nielsen began keeping track in 1949-1950: Americans watched 1 hour and 23 minutes more television at the end of the decade than at the beginning. Run the numbers and you'll find that 32 percent of the increase in viewing time from the birth of television to its peak occurred in the first years of the 21st century.
Over the last 8 years, all the new, non-TV things -- Facebook, phones, YouTube, Netflix -- have only cut about an hour per day from the dizzying amount of TV that the average household watches. Americans are still watching more than 7 hours and 50 minutes per household per day.
In fact, television viewing didn't peak until 2009-2010, when the average American household watched 8 hours and 55 minutes of TV per day. And the '00s saw the greatest growth in TV viewing time of any decade since Nielsen began keeping track in 1949-1950: Americans watched 1 hour and 23 minutes more television at the end of the decade than at the beginning. Run the numbers and you'll find that 32 percent of the increase in viewing time from the birth of television to its peak occurred in the first years of the 21st century.
Over the last 8 years, all the new, non-TV things -- Facebook, phones, YouTube, Netflix -- have only cut about an hour per day from the dizzying amount of TV that the average household watches. Americans are still watching more than 7 hours and 50 minutes per household per day.
I keep the news on my office TV with the sound down. Does that count me as a watcher of traditional TV? I would argue I'm not really watching it and that's hardly traditional. Same when I'm watching Netflix. I might have the baseball game on one TV muted while I'm watching streaming on another. Even with all that going, I might be working and using the TVs for background noise.
None of those statistics really capture the new paradigm.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Having worked with Nielsen data, I would suggest you are overestimating the quality of their data. It is truw they could do that, but I don't think they do. On the other hand, if you pay them enough, they will give you detailed data so you could probably do that kind of analysis yourself.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
A few years ago when we got one of the surveys, my wife listed me as watching most of the shows that she also watched (I watch ~2-8 hours of TV per WEEK, let alone the 2-3 hours/DAY she was watching). When I saw the survey and asked her why she did that, she told me that she wanted to be nice. I had to explain to her that they don't want "nice", they want accurate data.
If the survey had been addressed to me, it would have gone straight into the recycle bin.