Last Updated on July 16, 2016
When someone gets ticked off enough to complain to a television station, they almost always include what is intended to be a little dig about viewership: it comes into the form of, “Things like this are why so many people are turning the TV off.”
But are they really?
Well, clearly the people who write the complaints aren’t, because they’re watching something that led them to complain to start with.
But Nielsen’s annual study on viewership in 2009 indicates that for the most part, your average viewer isn’t tuning out, either.
Cable television, for example, has reached the 90% mark among households. That’s split between true cable television and satellite and other wireless services, but still, 90% of homes have access to at least more than the traditional “big four”  affiliates.
Most interesting is that television viewing for the average household is up from 2008. Not down, but up. Specifically, it’s an increase of just two minutes, which doesn’t sound like much at all. But when you consider that we’re talking about a total of 58 hours, 29 minutes of viewing per week, or more than eight hours per day, it’s hard to argue with a straight face that television is a “dying medium.”
There are other interesting stats at the linked article, including notes about the use of old-school VCRs and new-fangled DVRs, how viewing in black families compares against the average, and the fastest-growing viewing group, which isn’t necessarily the kind of group advertisers have traditionally courted.
Give it a look and compare to your own household’s viewing habits.
Thoughts, anyone?
