Not Dead Yet: TV Nation Lives On
Worried about Hulu and YouTube robbing market share from living room cable watching? Fearful that a generation of youngsters is more accustomed to leaning back from their PC LCDs and handhelds to catch that latest episode of “Girls Next Door” or “Mad Men?” Don’t sweat it yet. According to what purports to be the most comprehensive study yet of cross-platform media habits, live TV viewing continues to dwarf all other sources of video consumption… by a long shot. A joint project by the Council of Research Excellence, Nielsen and Ball State’s Center for Media Design found that adults (18+) view 309.1 minutes of live TV a day, compared to 22.9 minutes of DVD/VCR viewing. Considering all of the hype surrounding Web-based video, the real shocker in this report is the mere 2.4 minutes a day the sample spent with streaming video on the desktop. Even the famously wired 18-24-year-old segment only spent 5.5 minutes a day with online video, compared to 209.9 minutes with live TV. Not surprisingly, the game console garners 25.9 minutes a day of the college-age viewer’s use of TV, but that share almost halves as they age into the 25-34-year-old segment (down to 13.9 minutes ad day). Even mighty gaming bows to live video. Indeed, one of the most surprising results from the study indicates that the 45-54-year-old age group consumes the most video across platforms (about 9½ hours a day). Video is not a youth phenomenon by any means.
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