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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.
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.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor