[opendtv] News: Nielsen Reports U.S. TV Viewership at Record High
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 08:21:55 -0400
Via Shoptalk
Nielsen Reports U.S. TV Viewership at Record High
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES
(<http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=televisionNews&storyID=2005-09-30T003801Z_01_KRA002316_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-MEDIA-NIELSEN-DC.XML>Reuters)
-
U.S. TV viewership climbed again last season to a record household
average of eight hours, 11 minutes a day, Nielsen Media Research
reported on Thursday, challenging perceptions that Americans are
watching less than they once did.
The all-time high viewing level posted for the 2004-05 television
season, which ended earlier this month, was up nearly 3 percent from
the previous year and 12.5 percent from a decade ago, the TV ratings
service said.
Moreover, Nielsen said the average individual watched four hours and
32 minutes of TV last season, the highest level in 15 years. The
figures include in-home viewing levels for broadcast, cable and
satellite TV during all parts of the day.
Nielsen and other industry experts attributed the upward trend to the
growing number of TV sets in most homes and an explosion in the
number of available channels, a phenomenon that creates more choices
for viewers while making it harder for any one network to attract an
audience.
According to Nielsen, the average U.S. home now receives more than
100 channels of programming.
This fragmentation of the audience, along with the rising popularity
of video games, the Internet and DVDs, has helped feed the widely
held notion that TV viewing has been on the decline.
"Programmers and people who own networks are having to work a lot
harder to find a consistent audience," said Ben Grossman, associate
editor for industry publication Broadcasting & Cable.
The broadcasters have voiced particular concern in recent years that
young viewers are being drawn away from TV to other forms of
entertainment, a trend that could siphon advertising dollars away to
competing media.
But Nielsen's study supports the idea that while the TV viewership
pie is being cut up into ever smaller pieces, the overall size of the
pie is growing.
"This basically challenges the perception out there that people are
abandoning television or going to the Internet or doing other things
and taking away from television viewing activity," said David
Poltrack, the head of ratings research for the CBS network. "The
pervasiveness of the medium is not being eroded."
Poltrack noted that Nielsen's figures do not include TV viewing in
offices, restaurants, airports and other places outside the home,
which he said a recent Arbitron study in Houston showed was higher
than previously believed.
The welcome news from Nielsen comes as many observers see a
prime-time landscape reinvigorated by a new wave of off-beat,
formula-breaking shows sparked by the surprise success last season of
ABC hits "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives."
Nielsen's numbers suggest that the buzz factor surrounding the
arrival of new fall shows is translating into bigger audiences.
Summer 2005 viewing was up slightly from a year ago, when audiences
were buoyed by the Olympics, and the first week of the new 2005-06
season was considerably higher than premiere week last year, Nielsen
said.
Nielsen uses technology and surveys to measure what individuals and
their families, or households, watch.
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