Less Television in Online Homes

Shaheen writes "USA Today has an interesting report about how homes that have an Internet connection watch an average of %13 (about an hour) less television than other homes each day. You can read about it here. " What about those of us who forget to turn the TV off while we read our email? The scariest thing to me is that 13% is an hour. Who is watching 10 hours of TV a day?

Comments

TV is for video production...

[Izaak]

... which brings up an interesting question. I have taken up video production as a hobby, and would like to build a non-linear video editing system around a Linux system. I need pointers toward a linux compatible video capture card, decent digital video camera, etc. I've submitted this question as an Ask SlashDot, but it was rejected. :-( I'm even willing to write software and release it as open-source if thats what it takes to build my studio around Linux, but I need some pointers to get started. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Thad

Re:Nielsen Homes

[Tackhead]

Now ask yourself, if you were a TV producer, wouldn't you be interested in which shows people tuned into if they only tuned into one show? Who cares about people who change to a program just because the previous one went to a commercial break.

You've just hit the nail squarely on the head. The Nielsen Group doesn't want a representative sample of all TV viewers - only the ones that advertisers can sell stuff to. People who watch TV for content aren't part of that group.

More to the point - the purpose of the Neilsen ratings isn't to tell TV producers what they need to get the eyeballs of the die-hard fans who watch one or two programs religiously - it's to tell advertisers where their dollars will be best-spent. Better to ignore the Babylon 5 fanatic who makes $80K/year and ignores the advertising in order to get the family of four making $30K and spending all their disposable income on the crap that Bratleigh and Snotley see during the commercials (er, the 30-second ones between the 30-minute ones!) every Saturday morning.

The TV viewer who changes channels when the commercials come on, or who only watches a few hours a week, is like the web surfer who turns off images and/or blocks banner ads. He or she who ignores the marketing is, perforce, not worth marketing to. By contrast, the people who sit, slack-jawed, through every commercial displayed, and who spend several hours a day doing it, regardless of whether the programming is worth watching or not, are a very sought-after market.

What this has done to the quality of programming is left as an exercise to the reader. Which, of course, is why many of us have abandoned television for the 'net.

Speaking of which - I loved being able to read a few articles about the 30th anniversary of the moon landing without having to sit through six hours of unending coverage about an inexperienced pilot who Darwinned himself out of the gene pool by being too stupid to trust his instruments instead of his vertigo-addled inner ears.

But back to your Nielsen experience - it's clear that TV advertisers are just as happy to not have to put up with people like us as we are not to have to put up with people like them. They go where the money is, we go where the content is. 10 years ago, I'd have been worried about this - after all, where do you go for content once all media have been dumbed-down for the slack-jaw set? Thankfully, the answer is right in front of us - we just make and distribute our own damn content, and to hell with anyone who tries to get in our way.

Poll?

[InstantCool]

Who is watching 10 hours of TV a day?

Sounds like a Slashdot Poll to me.
--

Math not your stong suit, Rob?

[Doug Loss]

If 13% is about an hour, 100% is about 8 hours, not ten.

Doug Loss

Math not your stong suit, FascDot?

[cpeterso]

If the decrease in viewing time of 13% is 1 hour, then 1 hour / 0.13 = ~7.69 hours total. That is, 13% of 8 hours is 1.04 hours.

Re:Reading not your stong suit, Doug?

[Jburkholder]

No, I read it this way:

Wired homes watch an hour a day, which is 13% less than non-wired homes.

"Wired homes watch an average of 13% less TV -- about one hour daily -- than others, says the study"

So... (dusts off calculator) one hour a day being 87% of the 'others' total viewing,

(lessee 60/x = (100-13)/100 ... x = 68.96 minutes)

an hour a day is 13% less than 70 minutes a day?
I find that a lot easier to swallow than people are watching 8-10 hours of tv a day on average!

Eh?

[John Campbell]

lynn:~$ less television

television: No such file or directory

lynn:~$ _



Methinks I need to get out more...

Re:Reading not your stong suit, Doug?

[Jburkholder]

>I hope this clears things up for you

Heh, not in the least. You are going by Rob's synopsis of the article, and not what the article actually said, for one.

>From this we know that there is a 13% decrease in viewing time, and that this 13% decrease is equal to 1h.

Nope, the wired family watches an hour a day, which is 13% less than everyone else.

At least that's the way I read the article.

Why Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web

[cpeterso]

Jakob Nielsen has a great column about web usability. He has a number of convincing arguments that web ads do not work. Check out Why Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web and Web Research: Believe the Data.

• eye-tracking studies find that users never even see the ads
  
• click-through rates dropping from 2% to 0.5% in a few years
  
• sales data from many sites showing that they usually don't sell a lot to those few users who do click through - paying customers usually arrive in other ways
  

Nielson Homes

[Arandir]

Those folks watching 10 hours of TV a day are the Nielson Homes. For those that don't know, Nielson does the TV ratings. Not just anybody can get a Nielson box to put on top of their set. You have to be a TV junky to get one. It's the average Nielson Home that has the TV one ten hours a day. Half of them have it on longer!

I was once part of the Nielson "family" for about a week. They kicked me out of the program since I wasn't the "typical television viewer". (Anyone who's ever studied statistics reread that last sentence :-) ) I only watched about six hours of TV a week, so it wasn't enough for them. (About as stupid as Gallop cutting their poll short when they found out I was writing in "none of the above")

Now ask yourself, if you were a TV producer, wouldn't you be interested in which shows people tuned into if they only tuned into one show? Who cares about people who change to a program just because the previous one went to a commercial break.

I no longer own a TV. I suddenly realized that I hadn't turned the thing on in six weeks, so I sold it.

The next vegetarians

[alkali]

That's funny, I haven't owned a TV in [BIGNUM] years... There's nothing on TV except [favorite show]... I personally prefer to spend my time engaged in [favorite activity]... It's disgusting that people watch TV when they could be [favorite activity]... When I tell people I don't watch TV, they [express shock, throw fish, etc.]... How tragic that others fail to see how wrong they are and cannot be as [intellectual, life-affirming, socially daring] as I am.

If you thought the vegetarians were fun, just wait until you meet the TV-phobes.

True confession: Sometimes I like to drink and smoke while eating deep-fried meat in front of the television.

Re:The next vegetarians

[fable2112]

*LOL*

And if you think that's fun, try having to read them for classes. (Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death etc.)

I'm not a huge fan of the "idiot box" and I also don't eat a whole lot of meat, don't smoke, etc. But that's my thing, that's MY moral code, and I wouldn't impose it on anyone else (except perhaps whatever spouse and children I may or may not end up with).

Besides, I've got my stumbling-blocks, like net-addiction, and caffeine, and chocolate, and spending too darn much money on Starbucks. ;)

TV isn't pure evil any more than the net is all-porn-and-hate-speech, all-the-time. The problem is that, like with so many things, the tripe dominates and the good stuff gets pushed aside.

I didn't have cable until college. I was grateful for being able to veg out in front of *gasp* MTV the semester I broke my leg and wasn't going out much for obvious reasons. (Though I *did* hobble up to the weekly open-mic coffeehouse.) Later, I discovered the Sci-Fi channel and specifically Ray Bradbury Theater.

But as a kid, I watched: Sesame Street and lots of other PBS shows (any other Square One junkies out there?), the news, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, occasionally certain series (The Wonder Years and I'll Fly Away come to mind) when I happened to be home, and VERY occasionally Saturday morning cartoons on the RARE Saturday mornings I didn't have art classes, swim meets, etc.

If any single activity is sucking up all your time, there's a problem. And I don't care if it's TV, the Net, good old-fashioned reading, the SCA (guilty!), AD&D or some other roleplaying game, exercising, or working ridiculous amounts of overtime. Or anything else. And TV is particularly problematic because it tends to encourage uncritical acceptance.

But like I said, TV isn't inherently bad any more than the Net is. Generally speaking, I have better things to do, but if I happen to be home and Star Trek or anything else I like happens to be on, I can veg out with the best of them. :)