I Like To Watch… And So Do You

How is your screen time spent? Online? TV? on your iPhone? The common thought – especially with those engaged in the new media space – is that more and more people are spending less and less time with their TVs.

Wrong… again.

Back in November there was a Blog post titled, TV Viewing Is Down As Internet Usage Continues To Grow? Not Exactly, where I briefly Blogged about a Nielsen study on television (the average American was watching 8 hours and 18 minutes per day). Would you place your money that this usage has gone up or down?

"The average American spends an average of 8.7 hours each day consuming video media, and younger Baby Boomers (ages 45-54) watch the largest amount, 9.5."

That was the result of a research report conducted on behalf of the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence (CRE) by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design (CMD) and Sequent Partners, and reported today in MarketingVox (TV Dominates Americans’ 8.7 Hours of Daily Video Time). Once again, people are watching more television than ever before.

And now, for the big question: how is the online channel doing?

"This finding, according to researchers,  dispels anecdotal notions that Americans – especially those in younger age groups – are flocking in droves to free TV on the internet.  In  reality, the study found that computer video tends to be small, with an average time of two minutes (slightly more than 0.5%) a day and that the amount of exposure time to ads remains significant."

This same report goes on to say that even thought TV video is ranked at #1, computer use has overtaken radio as the #2 media activity (print rounds it out at #4).

The news item has much more information and statistics that are well worth checking out. It’s interesting to see the media landscape shift, and it’s equally interesting to see that within those eight hours of viewing the average consumer is still exposed to over 72 minutes of advertising and promotions.

Do we drink too much of our own Kool-Aid? All of us would have guessed that people were leaving TV for online video and their iPhones in droves. Is this transition going to take longer than we thought, or is it going to be some kind of hybrid usage/model that none of us can even see yet?