Reports of the demise of television watching continue to be premature. People may be spending time watching video online, downloading torrents, playing video games, and whatever else, but they're continuing to watch more TV on average as well.
For the 2008-2009 TV season, the amount of television watched reached an all-time high as Americans spent four hours and 49 minutes a day on average in front of the TV, up four minutes from last year and up 20% from 10 years ago.
via Nielsen Wire.
Clicking through to the source you'll learn that primetime viewing was flat vs. last year, but still on a slow upward trend over the period since 1991.
The reason this is surprising to most people is that broadcast network viewing continues to slide, as it has for more than a generation, but that slide has been more than made up by the gains for advertising supported cable networks.
So surprising since there’s nothing on…..
That is pretty surprising, I would have thought the opposite but ok.. Cable ratings are going up though so thats were people are probably watching most TV now.
It’s possible that the rise in daytime television viewing can be linked to the rising unemployment rate – no proof, just a theory…
Hehehehe, that’s priceless… I’m one of those folks who drag the averages downward (nowhere near that many hours a day — heck, not that many a WEEK a lot of times!)