Legal Research

Still Some Life in TV

Americans hugely addicted to TV, but money doesn't follow
By Jon Stokes Ars Technica November 24, 2008

"If a new study by Nielsen is accurate, reports of the video star's death at the hands of the Internet have been greatly exaggerated. The ratings company tracked the time that Americans spend with the three main "screens" in their life?TV, Internet, and the mobile phone?and found that TV still rules. The study claims that Americans broke new records in TV watching during the 2007-2008 season: households averaged 8 hours and 18 minutes per day, or an average of 4 hours and 45 minutes per person per day. These figures are the highest on record, and they represent a quarterly increase in addition to a yearly increase.

Both regular and time-shifted TV viewing are on the rise, with time-shifted viewing posting a whopping 52.5 percent year-over-year increase from the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2008; regular viewing was up only 4.1 percent."

Read the rest in the article. Of course, the traditional alphabet soup networks are in decline:

Read more here.

Television is an interesting metaphor to follow when we start to think about the impact on library DVD collections by streaming media or e-books and print books. Change happens but it's rarely simple or clear but ambiguous for years.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).