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Television Entertainment Technology

When Did TV Watching Peak? (theatlantic.com) 178

Posted by msmash from the it's-never-out-of-fashion dept.
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.
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When Did TV Watching Peak? More

When Did TV Watching Peak?

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  • Actively watching or passive background (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alascom ( 95042 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:35AM (#56699450)

    "...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.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I'd imagine that Nielsen has ways of detecting this, like if the channel on the cable box hasn't been changed in over 2 hours after a program is over.

      With the data they are collecting, they probably have a pretty good idea of what your tastes in TV are. If the morning news is over and Jerry Springer is left on for 20 minutes before it was changed (and you don't normally watch Jerry Springer!), that's a clue that you might have been really watching it.

      • Re: Actively watching or passive background (Score:4, Interesting)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:56AM (#56699636) Journal
        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.
        • I've done the Neilsen thing a few times.

          When I did it (last time maybe 2 years ago?) each time, I was given a log book in which I manually wrote down what channel and what program I viewed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I also wonder how accurate their data is.

      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.

  • Whether it's "TV" or a tablet or a phone or whatever, most people I know watch a shocking amount of entertainment on their screens.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by porges ( 58715 )

      Yeah, I don't get "I don't watch TV, just Netflix". On my setup, the experience is identical. (And of course the program material might also be identical.)

      • Yeah, I don't get "I don't watch TV, just Netflix". On my setup, the experience is identical. (And of course the program material might also be identical.)

        Only the half that's not ads.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by porges ( 58715 )

          I FF through ads with my Tivo -- and I could install a software upgrade that would allow it to seamlessly skip them 100%. Any cable subscriber with a DVR can do the same, at least at the FF-through-them level. And I have a half-dozen commercial-free channels on my cable system, although admittedly one of them used to also deny their true nature in their famous slogan ("It's not TV...it's HBO") Is having ads really the thing that makes it TV vs. not-TV?

  • ... but it's dreck that's by and large built by professionals and and as expertly aimed as possible at likely consumers. Combine that with a LOT of bored people and you get a pretty large market. And sometimes the content can have some good stuff mixed in with the bad.
    • 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 ce

      • 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.

        Interestingly, as a Roman Catholic I was taught basically this. The fallen angels chose to separate themselves from God because they had perfect knowledge from their creation and are unable to be redeemed because they cannot unmake the decision, because of the perfect knowledge.

        Us, on the other hand, have imperfect knowledge and we only get to make that decision after living our lives and being exposed to God at the final judgement. Again, however, we are choosing to separate ourselves from God because we f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        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.

        That has been true for a very long time. Shakespeare typically included a fair bit of lowbrow humor for the groundlings as well as more insightful commentary for those open to it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by voss ( 52565 )

      One thing FCC did wrong with DTV is allowing junk channels (shopping networks, chain repeats) to control too much of the OTA airwaves.
      The broadcast channels have allowed the secondary channels they own to go basically underutilized.

      In the UK OTA Freeview includes 24 hour news channels such as bbc news and sky news, OTA movie and sports channels.

  • That could be broken down into a bunch of different things.

    2hrs of TV for the kids, 2hrs for mom, 2hrs for dad. 4hrs on 2 different screens at the same time. It does not mean the entire family sits in front of the tv or 8hrs a day.

  • Found the real cause of obesity: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:50AM (#56699570) Journal

    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.

    • For a family of four, it could be Mom watching the news in the morning, dad watching the news in the evening (we're up to 4hr now), each kid watching an hour of their favorite shows (that brings us to 6hr), and the family sitting together for the evening with the TV on while they play a board game.

      Mom and dad will have watched 4hr each, half of which will have been the news, while the kids only took in 3hr each, though 2hr of that would have been as a backdrop to family bonding over other activities. In o
      • Cut the cord to the "news" too -- it's mostly talking heads yammering on about crime and death. Gore sells, but fear also pushes the US towards "law and order". Don't be part of the mass incarceration system by enabling "news" reporters to spread fear.
        • You assume me to be an average American. My friend, the average American reads this report and thinks the average American watches 7hr 50min of TV every day because they don't realize that the word "household" means "more than one person". My previous post should be a dead giveaway that I'm a bit above average in that regard.

          That said, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. If the news truly is enemy propaganda, all the more reason to keep your eyes on it.
          • I know all this. But the "enemy" in this case is more like a boring uncle. It's not worth the time and aggravation listening to their inane yammering :D
            • You don't think it's worth knowing that your 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment rights are under attack? Fisrt we lose the 2nd (which guard the 1st and 4th), then the 1st (which also guards the 4th), then... well, prepare your anus, because the searches will never cease.

              That's an extreme worst-case scenario, of course, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility if we lose our ability to defend the few rights we've managed to retain thus far.

              • We know that already. They've been under attack since this country was founded. First slavery, then Jim Crow, then the Red Scares, then the War on Some Drugs, then the War on Terror...

                The time spend watching some inane talking head yammering away could be better spent volunteering for the ACLU or Innocence Project.

                • First slavery, then Jim Crow, then the Red Scares, then the War on Some Drugs, then the War on Terror...

                  And all of those occurences were learned of through what, fucking mental osmosis? Telepathy? No, the fucking news.

                  The time spend watching some inane talking head yammering away could be better spent volunteering for the ACLU or Innocence Project.

                  As long as those organizations continue to have your best interest at heart, assuming they currently do, or ever did. If you limit yourself to their echo chamber, you'll never know the difference.

                  • Today's American TV news is generally useless in discussing and informing the public about pressing issues.
                    • Well, that's one issue that should probably be discussed. How would you know if you weren't watching? In fact, how do you know, if you don't watch?
                    • Because I occasionally hear it playing on businesses/other people's TVs and it's worse than useless.
                    • You're missing the point, of course, which is that you wouldn't know this if you weren't exposed to it.
                    • One can know that Ebola is a bad thing without being personally exposed to it.
                    • One would first have to know what ebola was.

                    • You have to be highly selective with your news sources. Any time you see a news site publish a headline that asks a question or doesn't provide synopsis of the article's contents. Then ban that source from your news feed. Any mention of celebrity bullshit should be an instant ban too. I have to admit I enjoy celeb gawking but it's easy enough to get without having to sift if from your news.

                      Once you've done this you'll find that the message you get from the news becomes more and more congruent.

                    • Yes, and there's a vast difference between doing that and doing what b0s0z0ku insisted must be done. Presumably, you recognize this.

                    • I didn't read that far up the thread I guess you're referring to his urging that Americans become uninformed activists?
                      Americans have done a great job being uninformed activists but I don't think more media consumption will help them. They'll continue consuming whatever they like watching. Nobody is going to bother with boring old news that takes itself seriously when there is so much clickbait on facebook and a steady stream of upskirts on fox news.

                      Even if they watched real news I think maybe our world h

              • Oh see my friend, they've already gutted all of them and in fact turned them into hostile zombies they can sic on the unimportant people. Accept they've been ripped apart and the constitution is not the bible. It's not holy, or infallible. It had a good run but the constitution simply serves as a set of goalposts for high priced corporate lawyers aim to when attaining legal supremacy for their clients.

                • I don't think I've ever read something with this high of a nonsense-to-content ratio in my entire life. Good job!

                  • I assumed that most people would already have some idea what I was talking about.
                    The point is that in the 200 some years since the constitution was written, monied interests have used their superior access to the legal system to win over and over. The result is that 200 years of case law has mutated the constitution so that it favors the interests of the rich. Also as a result the legal resources to successfully invoke the constitution are beyond the reach of most people in the country.

                    Accept that the co

        • I used to play a game where I'd have the tv news program on while sitting at a computer and see how fast I could read the stories they were covering. Speech is a very slow way to transmit information.

          Now that we have the Internet I think back to the days when people mostly got their information from television and it's kind of scary how easily people could be intentionally misinformed or just plain not informed. Lots of coverage of local crime, fires, sports, etc. and virtually nothing about meaningful e

      • Sounds like (You) all need to go outside more. xD
        • Sounds like the average American spends 5 of their 8 non-work-non-sleep hours each day doing things other than watching TV. The size of the average US household is 2.54 people, meaning the average American watches 3hr 2min of TV per day. Perhaps still a bit excessive, but remember that will include those who watch none and those who are unemployed and watch 10-12hr/day, as well. Nice (incorrect) assumption in your parenthetical, there, as well.
          • Sounds to me like you need to lighten up. Try going outside more yourself, the fresh air is full of negative ions, which have a calming effect. xD
            • And you continue with your incorrect assumption, despite having been told once already that your are incorrect. Maybe you're the one spending too much time trying to life-coach people on the internet who you know nothing about?
              • What I do know is you're getting really really defensive over something someone who isn't even using his real name and whom you have never met and never will meet is saying on the Internet; why do you think that is? The simplest answer is you feel guilt because you know you should get more exercise instead of sitting in front of a screen for too many hours when you're not at work, and possibly because you're also not spending time doing active things with your family, and they're spending too much time sitt
                • Oh yes, please, let me detail my life to a stranger on the internet. No, sorry, I have better things to do and would, honestly, rather not let you know when I will or will not be home, for hopefully obvious reasons.
    • Two days ago, the temperature here in the upper-midwest hit 100 Degrees Fahrenheit. It was followed by a hailstorm. I'm staying inside.

  • 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 scho

    • You're missing the fact that this is numbers for screens in a household. If you watch half hour of news while your kid watches an hour of cartoons and your spouse watches two half hour morning shows, your family has racked up 2.5 hours of viewing time in one hour.

    • Does it count if you have the TV on while doing other things?

      I'll often turn on the TV to fill the silence while I do housework or getting some food. I'm not giving it my full attention, and am doing other things, but it's on. I suspect many others do this too, and thus TV watching numbers might be inflated.

    • 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.

    • 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 L

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      Per household. Also, most people don't work, and certainly not full time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JD-1027 ( 726234 )
      weekends

  • TV is complete shit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:53AM (#56699608)

    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.

    • Not to mention that the monthly fees for TV in the US is stupidly high.

      It doesn't have to be. We can watch TV absolutely free with an over-the-air antenna. Most of us choose to have more programming options and buy cable or satellite.

      I know you have the TV License over in the UK. Is that per screen or house? Some cable companies may serve multiple screens up to a point for no extra charge, and usually extra sets are at a greatly reduced rate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      I'm afraid I agree with you and I really don't like sending money to Comcast so they get more money to conduct all kinds of mischief. But dammit I find watching CSPAN history and BookTV on weekends very interesting. And I have no good alternates for highspeed internet.

  • I have the news on with the sound off (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:53AM (#56699610) Homepage

    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.

  • Netflix & Amazon are TV (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @10:59AM (#56699668)

    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.

  • We are a storytelling, story-loving creature.

    Nobody thinks you are frying your brain if you go watch a play on the stage. Why do they think you are if you watch the same play on the screen?

    Nobody thinks you are "reading the idiot book" if you read a Sherlock Holmes story. Why do they think you are "watching the idiot box" if you watch a Sherlock Holmes story?

    Personally, I often prefer reading. But I don't see what's so intrinsically bad about screens.

  • A newly discovered gusher of sitcom and reality TV viewers under the Texas Permian Basin debunks the mainstream media's "Peak boobtube" fake news. Estimates range from 120 million to 200 million gallons per day (beer consumption) with comparable quantities of Big Macs, KFC, pizza and Diet Coke.

  • ... the internet is interactive. Also people are either 1) Watching netflix or 2 downloading and deferring their watching until later. So that would slowly eat into TV. But most people aren't technology literate. The same reason why steam and mmo's exist -- they could only exist in a world where the vast majority of people don't understand how computers work and easily buy into corporate propaganda.

    • Moving your index finger is a pretty low bar for the term 'interactive'....

      • Interactive as in you don't just have to sit passively and receive. AKA discussion, research, communicating online on forums, etc. Much more active mentally than TV. Not physically of course.

  • Is the 8 hours something like 2 hours per day, multiplied by 4 people per household?

  • There is some boggling thought (or newspeak?) here:

    With Netflix and Amazon Prime, Facebook Video and YouTube, it's tempting to imagine that the tech industry destroyed TV.

    That's like saying the Ford Focus and Toyota Corolla destroyed cars. No, they're cars. Netflix is TV. Amazon Prime is an upfront amortized delivery charge plus TV. Youtube is TV. They bit into competitors; they didn't do the slightest damage to the TV itself. They became it. Similarly:

    Over the last 8 years, all the new, non-TV things -- Fa

    • I'd be interested who is still watching broadcast TV via radio waves, vs. who is getting those same shows through cable providers. Then there are those who watch pirated or pass-out-of-copyright versions of the same material on youtube, netflix, etc.

  • The only way I can come up with the average household watching nearly 9 hours of traditional tv per day is by including the families which plop their kids in front of the boob tube. I watch about 90 minutes per night, but my kids probably watch an hour per day while I'm at work. Not ideal, but kids entertained by the tv means my wife can vacuum the other rooms, do laundry, etc, without the kids all over her.

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