How long does the average American watch TV per day?
Well, yes the answer came before the question. This is the latest TV watching statistics on how much television Americans are watching and I just read it from a Los Angeles Times report about the most recent survey that was conducted by Nielsen, Co.
One hundred and fifty one hours— that’s 5 hours a day of TV on the average for the last quarter of the year 2008, which was up 3.8% from 145 hours average from 4th quarter of 2007 the survey said.
This finding was way higher than the figure of 3.8 hours per day or a measly 120 hours per month TV watching by Americans that reported by another research firm last year.
They (Nielsen and LA Times) explain the increase in average time by citing the rising interest of people in the US presidential elections and the winter season. They also cited the findings that there is an apparent increase in the number of television units people are putting into their homes which is giving every household member easier access to TV entertainment which Americans seem to be needing more of these days.
“The timing of a lot of things has converged, what with the winter coming on, the darker nights, less money to go around and people entertaining at home more,” said Susan Bandura, director of strategy at San Francisco advertising agency Hoffman/Lewis.
Also contributing to the increase are the steady growth in TV programming and the number of TVs in households, Nielsen spokesman Gary Holmes said. The average U.S. household now contains more televisions than people, which means that family members or roommates can watch their favorite shows alone.
“Everyone has their own niche show they want to watch,” he said.
Furthermore, the increase in people watching TV on internet and other media like Tivos, mobile phones, etc. Teenagers are contributing in a major way to the increase in TV because they spend about 6.2 hours watching video content on the go through their mobile phones. One surprising finding in the survey concludes that senior American citizens actually watch the most indicating a trend with respect to age.
…Teenagers (12 to 17) spend 103 hours watching TV a month, whereas senior citizens (65 and older) spend 207 hours. That’s about seven hours a day — enough for two baseball games.
Read more about the TV-watching survey report.
The Television 