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People watched more TV in a recession, duh.
- mericans 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.
I kinda love TV. Commercials are perks. I'm not trying to say that I like commercials or want to watch them, but they're very conveniently spaced breaks so you can wander off and do something else and not lose track of what's going on so much. I realized I often put TV on to only half-watch it. One cannot half-watch Netflix shows if one cares about them at all. also like You can't exercise for 8 hours a day people would call you compulsive. You can't cook for 8 hours a day people would call you fat. Or your job would be to be a chef. You could maybe read 8 hours a day, and I think TV should be compared more to reading than to other activities as I feel the two are most equitable in nature. Lots of things that are really good for you, you just can't do for 8 hours at a time. That was a silly, stupid sentence of the author's. The thing that Americans do most often with their free time is not cooking or exercising or hiking or any other seemingly salutary activity
Alexis Madrigal is a dishonest doofus. TV peaked more than a decade ago. Those of us whose livelihoods depend on viewership can cite chapter and verse. 9 million people watched the last Game of Thrones finale. 350 million people worldwide tuned in to see who shot JR. More than that, every network has been pursuing a second screen strategy for a decade. They know you're doing something else. If they can monitize that, they win. Used to be getting you to vote for who wins American Idol. Now it means getting you to partly pay attention to Stranger Things while filing TPS reports. My big show? Viewership is down every year. Yet percentage of the demo is up every year. TV is so totally peaked it's not even funny... ... Even though kids in my jewelry class will sit there watching Arrested Development while filing silver.
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francopoli · 266 days ago · link ·
I had a thought that the peak was off. There were also only 4-6 media outlets in 1980. There are so many media outlets, personalities, channels, streaming etc that your 9 million people is what, 2% the media audience? Interesting. I figured they have podcasts or spotify/music streaming instead of a show.350 million people worldwide tuned in to see who shot JR.
Even though kids in my jewelry class will sit there watching Arrested Development while filing silver.
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2.9%. And that's loosy-goosey because HBO has no advertisers to satisfy so they don't need to get Nielsen to count their viewers so nothing that's reported is quantified. The last Superbowl pulled a 47.4. That's considered to be an average of 103 million viewers, despite the 304 million tv viewers that Neilsen believes in. But then, the demo for "super bowl" is "people who breathe" instead of "adults 18-54" which most of network TV goes for. Colbert makes people happy with a 0.42, which is barely a million people. It's funny. People point to the amazing ratings Battlestar got and they peaked at 2 million viewers. I've had shows where 2m viewers was the death knell and we knew we'd be gone in a couple weeks. Firefly couldn't muster 5m viewers and it was the most expensive thing on Fox. "Who Shot JR" was 38.2 with a 61 share at 91 million viewers... of 228 million people in the United States.
And that's why averages are deceiving, most of us with jobs dont even have 8 hrs of free time a day, much less free time where we are located near a TV, but it so happens that half the population is not in the workforce and they can watch TV for 12-16 hrs to make up for everyone else. That being said it would be interesting to see a graph of TV time VS income.
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francopoli · 266 days ago · link ·
Look at median ages. Old people watch TV. Young people stream, and use as much ad-block as they can stack onto the web browser. Granted I have odd friends, but ZERO of us watch movies, and I'd put our TV viewership (me, zero) as 10 hours a week, tops.