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Average television watching time per U.S. adult grew from 16 hours per week in 1995 to 20 hours per week in 2009.   From 2003 to 2009, television watching time increased 9%.[1]   Television watching time accounts for about half of total personal discretionary time and far exceed time spent on the web.[2]  Not surprisingly, new media firms are eager to combine television and the web.

While traditional television watching continues to dominate time using media, other changes suggest ongoing communications industry changes.  Time spent socializing and communicating in person and time spent reading (as conventionally understood) fell 12% and 7% on average among U.S. adults from 2003 to 2009.   Time spent playing (computer and non-computer) games and computer use for leisure increased 31%. [3]  Time spent playing computer games and using computers for leisure is likely to continue to increase relatively rapidly in the future.

Time use by age categories suggests that easing loneliness is an important value of media use.  Persons 75 years and older spent about twice as much time watching television and reading as do persons ages 15 to 19 years.   The former, elderly group also spend 36% less time socializing and communicating than do the young, later group.   Easy-to-use social networking technology potentially could offer the elderly a more engaging way to spend their time.

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Data: U.S. time use data (Excel version)

Notes:

[1] These figures are for time watching television as the primary activity in non-work time.   They are based on well-developed, openly documented time-budget surveys.  Other commercially produced statistics of television watching time are considerable higher.  See Galbi (2001) Section III.  The second figure is based on comparisons among American Time Use Surveys.  In these surveys, a separate category specifies "computer use for leisure."  Hence television-watching time is best interpreted to mean watching video on the traditional special-purpose and specially placed device called a television.  For the data, see U.S. time use data.

[2] Persons in the U.S. ages 15 and older watched about 4600 minutes of television per month in 2006, compared to about136 minutes of online (web) video per month in March, 2008.   See note [2], sources and details of television vs. online video.   A widely cited comparison of television watching time to "personal Internet time" was quite misleading.

[3] See worksheet on U.S. time use trends over the past six years.

Offer Comments

YouTube is currently selling ads against less than 3% of its inventory. YouTube's advertising revenue is likely to total about $200 million for 2008. One explanation for YouTube's relatively poor advertising performance is that advertisers are concerned about what appears around their ads:

Some big advertisers, [Sean Muzzy, media director at Neo@Ogilvy, a digital ad agency owned by WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather] says, haven't been comfortable that their ads might appear next to amateur videos. [WSJ]

In at least one major hotel in the DC metro area, CNN is projected onto the mirror in front of the sink in the men's room. That puts persons in the position of watching television ads while they are washing their hands in immediate preparation for leaving. These circumstances don't seem like good positioning for advertising.

Better advertising positioning would be on the inside of toilet-stall doors. Sitting on the toilet is similar to the position and time-relations for traditional television-watching. In the past, television has conceded toilet time to newspapers. In today's highly competitive media market, that doesn't make good business sense. You should expect to see television moving into the toilet.

Offer Comments

While stories are staples of television programming, the most popular YouTube videos are predominately music videos from major record labels. Among the all-time most viewed YouTube channels, the leader is the Universal Music Group channel. That channel has about as many views as the total of the nine next highest viewed channels, all but one of which are also mainstream commercial music video channels. Among all-time most viewed YouTube single videos, there's slightly more diversity in form and producers. The all-time most viewed YouTube video is the mockumentary Evolution of Dance. However, it has only about 1% more views than the next leading video, which is an RCA Records music video. Major record company music videos account for six of the top ten most viewed Youtube videos.

Online video isn't succeeding in telling stories. The popular YouTube music videos typically communicate an emotion or feeling, not a story. Video appears on many sites besides Youtube; about 49% of videos viewed are on sites with less than 1% of total video views. However, the average duration of online video viewing across all sites is only 2.8 minutes per video.[1] That's not long enough to develop much of a story.

Flickr has embraced video in a way that gives little room for video story-telling. Video on Flickr is limited to a maximum of 90 seconds. The idea of Flickr video is a "long photo"; video that's "personal" and "simple -- not overproduced or slick." Telling a story with video is much more difficult than taking a photograph. Video story-telling typically requires multiple scenes, often multiple takes and multiple actors, and usually considerable editing. Flickr video clearly is not meant for video story-telling.

Across the U.S. population, online video viewing time currently amounts to only about 3% of television viewing time.[2] Online video viewing time is unlikely to come close to television viewing time unless online viewers start to watch many more story-oriented videos.

Notes:

[1] Online videos viewed in the U.S. in March, 2008, based on comScore data. The average duration of the 20 all-time most popular YouTube videos, weighted by popularity, is 4.7 minutes. So YouTube videos don't appear to be driving down the average duration of all online video viewing.

[2] The American Time Use Survey, which covers persons in the U.S. ages 15 and older, shows about 4600 minutes of television watched per person per month in 2006. comScore states that, in the U.S. in March, 2008, "average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video." The source gives 139 million online video viewers, who are 73.7% of the "total U.S. Internet audience". Those figures imply a total U.S. Internet audience of 190 million. There are about 240 million persons in the U.S. ages 15 and older. Using this latter figure as the base implies 136 minutes of online video watched per person per month.

Offer Comments

The rise of television in the U.S. in the 1950s did not greatly affect library book circulation. The share of households in the U.S. with television rose from 9% in 1950 to 87% in 1960. Over that same period, public library book circulation per person in libraries' service areas rose about 40%. While television looms large in much thinking about media, factors other than television were more important in driving library book circulation.

The rise of television probably reduced library book circulation in the 1950s about 20% relative to what it would have been without television. In a study published in 1963, Edwin Parker matched 14 communities in Illinois with similar population sizes, urban rural status, and public library book circulation. In one community in each pair, the share of television households rose from less than 10 percent to more than 70 percent from 1950 to 1953 (early TV sample). In the other community in the pair, that rise occurred between 1953 and 1958 (late TV sample). The patterns of library book circulation in the libraries' service areas is consistent with the rise in access to television accounting for a one-book reduction in library circulation per person per year (see table below). That's about 20% of circulation per person in 1958.

Audiovisual items are more significant to library book circulation today than the rise of television was. Circulation of audiovisuals currently accounts for about 25% of public library circulation. Substituting audiovisual borrowing for book borrowing involves changing a smaller scope of behavior than substituting watching television for borrowing items.

Reference:

Parker, Edwin B. (1963), "The Effects of Television on Public Library Circulation," The Public Opinion Quarterly, v. 27, n. 4 (Winter), pp. 578-589.

Offer Comments

Most television watching is best modeled as a two-stage decision process. First, a person decides to watch television. That means the person sits on a couch and stares vacantly at a large screen a few yards away. Then the person decides what to watch. That means choosing among current, salient video programming offerings. These two decisions are very loosely connected.

The behavior of persons who own a digital video recorder (DVR) is consistent with this decision model. In the U.S., households with a DVR use it for at most 25% of their television viewing time.[1] In the UK, households with a DVR use it even less -- about 14% of television viewing time.[2] Most of the time, persons can't be bothered to record and watch programs pre-selected from the huge universe of programs available to be recorded.

Persons don't even bother to record programs so that they can skip advertising. When UK DVR owners were asked about how they use their DVR, 40% reported regularly fast-forwarding through adverts, while 42% reported never fast-forwarding through adverts. When specifically asked, 78% claimed to always or almost always fast-forward through adverts when using the DVR.[3] Evidently persons can't remember well their immediate viewing behavior with respect to adverts. More significantly, persons who aren't using their DVR surely aren't fast-forwarding through adverts.

Average time spent watching television is likely to change neither quickly nor by a large amount in response to changes in the relative value of media use opportunities. Differences in video programming have little effect on aggregate television viewing time. New services offered on computer screens and mobile screens --- video sharing, social networking, community news and information, in-depth learning opportunities -- are similarly likely to have little effect on aggregate television view time. The amount of leisure time available (total working hours, weekday versus weekend) and socio-economic characteristics affecting broad patterns of life -- educational attainment, employment status, presence of children at home -- largely control television viewing time.

A recent IBM-sponsored survey has media pundits discussing the decline or explosion of television, but the survey actually provides rather weak evidence. The survey was an Internet-based survey, not a random sample of some relevant universe. Persons who respond to an Internet-based survey are likely to use the Internet more than average adults. U.S. respondents to the survey were 71% women and 27% persons ages 18-24, while U.S. adults (persons 18 and over) are 51% women and 13% ages 18-24.[4] Thus the survey demographics highly over-represent women and young adults.

Most significantly, persons who have commented on the results of the survey generally don't seem to understand what was reported. The press release for the survey reported that "personal Internet time rivals TV time." In the survey, "personal Internet time" meant Internet use at home and on "personal time at work."[5] A survey in 2002 of a representative sample of U.S. adults found that employees with web access spent 3.7 hours per week in personal use of the Internet at work, and 5.9 hours per week using the Internet for work-related purposes at home. Both these time uses apparently count as "personal Internet use" in the IBM survey. Television isn't a feasible alternative for either of those time uses. Most workers in the cushy private sector don't have televisions in their offices, and watching television is almost never a work-related activity at home.

The challenge for traditional television isn't that television viewing time will decline rapidly. The challenge is that traditional television advertising, compared to personalized, action-oriented, performance-measurable advertising, will decline rapidly in market value.

Notes:

[1] Reporting on a telephone survey, June-July 2007, of a random sample of 1,800 adults in households with a TV (and a telephone), Leichtman Research Group stated that "over one in every five households" had a DVR and estimated that "95% of all TV viewing in the U.S. is still of live TV." These data imply that no less than 75% of DVR owners' TV viewing time is live viewing, i.e. distributor-scheduled programming. The extent to which persons record and watch television programs on analog videocassette recorders raises the estimated DVR owners' live TV viewing time. So does the extent to which DVR ownership is over 20%. An IBM-sponsored Internet survey found 24% of persons in the U.S. owned a DVR in April, 2007. See U.S. findings, p. 9. As discussed subsequently above, this sample isn't representative of the U.S. adult population.

[2] Spring, 2006 BARB measurements in households with Sky+ DVR.

[3] Ofcom, The Communications Market 2007, Section 1 Converging communications markets, p. 85. In Q1 2007, 15% of UK homes had DVRs, almost double the 2006 figure. See id. p. 69.

[4] See U.S. study findings, p. 4, compared to U.S. census data.

[5] U.S. study findings, p. 7, comparing "Daily Personal Internet Usage; Home and Personal Time at Work" to "Daily Television Viewing."

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Was rural life once like the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie? Now reinventing the interview on YouTube, a retired farmer asks some tough questions and describes rural life as it truly was in the 1930s, before television.

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