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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.
"...watching more than 7 hours and 50 minutes per household per day"
I suspect people aren't "watching" as much as just leaving a TV playing in the background. To Nielsen, they would appear as the same thing.
Are people really watching 8hrs a day or is the TV simply on? We leave ours on all of the time when not at home because the dogs like hearing the voices and they don't misbehave.
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Americans are still watching more than 7 hours and 50 minutes per household per day.
FFS I didn't even watch that much the last time I was unemployed. People need to cut the other cord: the power cord to the TV, and GO OUTSIDE.
What's really annoying is that the good shows often go right over most peoples' heads, so they don't last long. Some good shows do exist that have been on the air practically forever (The Simpsones is one example); usually, these shows have some intelligent content for those of us with a brain (e.g. smart humor in The Simpsons) mixed in with more obvious entertainment for the masses. It's a delicate balance, though -- not enough obvious shit and you lose the audience the advertisers want; too much and it ceases being a good show.
Take Lucifer as an example. Most Christian conservatives aren't going to watch it, simply for its name. The few who do will initially observe that it portrays Lucifer as "the good guy" and tune out. Very few will notice that the series is actually about Lucifer growing and maturing, with a very strong Christian message behind it. Since Christian conservatives are a majority in this country, that means most of the potential audience is gone right out of the gate, and the show is being cancelled after only 3 seasons, despite having built a universe that could easily support 10 or more (just with what we know thus far). Sure, it has its hokey moments, but what show doesn't? If you didn't see it coming already and you actually make it through the first two seasons and what's aired thus far of the third, you learn just what makes it such a great show; if you did see it coming, you have affirmed what you already suspected. Of course [SPOLIER ALERT] the notion that we (and not God) choose whether we view ourselves as devils or angels is offensive to many Christians, so revealing that plot point sooner might not have saved the show, but the show really does make one think and we do need more of that in this country.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Now.. I am not saying that all programing is shit, but the mode of consumption is total shit.
The amount of advert you watch for a 30 min program is nuts.
The UK is shockingly bad about this. I would say you get about 17 min of actual program per 30 min, the rest is loud and obnoxious adverts.
Why would anyone actually pay money to suffer that crap?
Not to mention that the monthly fees for TV in the US is stupidly high. When I was last living there, we paid 120 per month for TV plus internet. We ended up dropping TV but still needed to pay 70 per month for internet.
Nice that they are now allowed to kill your netflix speed even though you give those asshats almost 1k a year.
Of my friends, I know only a couple with TV and that is because they are diehard soccer fans.
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
24 hours a day - 8 hours of work/school - 8 hours of sleep = 8 hours remaining. So every waking moment that is not at work or asleep is spent watching TV??? On average?
So that means a significant portion are spending >8 hours a day! And it means the "average" American does absolutely no other thing with their day. No eating, no travel, no video games, no gardening, no soccer games, no taking out the trash. This doesn't seem believable. Even kids spend 8 hours schooling if you include travel to school and homework and the chorus concert.
What am I missing?
What are you missing? The part where they state that the 8-hour statistic is per household, not per person.
Netflix & Amazon are TV, they're just a different delivery mechanism. We didn't talk about cable destroying TV as it became more popular than antennas.
Youtube & Facebook are different IMO as they serve an entirely different kind of content.
What am I missing?
I think it's this:
per household
That, and the fact that unlike yours, the average US household consists of more that one person.
The size of the average American household is 2.58 people, which brings the average per-person down to 3hr 2min. That sounds about right, actually: in Stereotypeville, Mom might leave the TV on while she cooks and cleans, which could account for 5-6 hours, leaving 2-3 hours for Dad, Little Timmy, and his sister, Alice. That's only one hour each and, unless Dad watches the news, in which case Little Timmy and Alice have only watched a single half-hour show each, unless they also watched the news and/or both watch the same shows.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I didn't say they were the majority...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I don't know about you, but I probably clock 12+ hours of TV per day on average - basically any time I'm programming I have something (usually TV shows, but push that number up to 16-18+ hours if you count movies) streaming in the background. What we really need to look at, as a national issue, is forcing entertainers to make more quality sci-fi, I can only rewatch it so much before being forced to watch lesser programming.
You can program the Comcast remote so that it can control your TV as well. More convenient, but also great for Comcast who now know when you power up your TV -- "she just hit the power up all button".
I come here for the love
On their website, Nielson says:
Chosen at random through proven methodology, Nielsen’s U.S. TV families represent a cross-section of representative homes throughout the country.
That's a lie.
Nielson only selects people who watch enough TV to survey. We don't really watch TV, and Nielson sent me their diary for a week and told me if I filled it out they'd let me do a month's worth and pay me a pittance.I figured I would to see what happened. What happened was that they sent me a response saying in effect that I did not meet their criteria to be a "Nielson Household". Why? We didn't watch enough TV. Too much Netflix and YouTube, and not enough cable.
So while I can believe that Nielson has an understanding of what people are watching on TV, it's complete bullshit to call this number the average that Americans watch per day. It's the average of users who Nielson thinks watch enough TV that they want to survey. Nothing more, nothing less.
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