With more TV viewing options than ever before, Americans are watching more TV than ever before, be it watching TV the traditional way, by streaming video via the Internet, time-shifted viewing using DVRs, or on mobile devices, according to The Nielsen Company’s latest “Cross-Platform Report.”
Traditional TV viewing remains the predominant mode of viewing by far: it increased 22% per month per person in the US over the past year, according to Nielsen. Analysts noted that results show consumers willing to pay for high-quality content , and that broadcast-only homes amount to less than 1/10th of US TV households.
Streaming video over the Internet, highest among the younger set, also increased, as did time-shifted TV viewing, along with growth in DVR ownership. Mobile video accounted for a relatively small number of hours spent viewing TV per month, but it has increased 41% over the last year and more than 100% since 2009.
Nielsen’s past cross-platform research consistently showed that the “heaviest” TV viewers watched more whatever the platform. That view has been altered a bit as of this last year, according to Nielsen’s analysis. The lightest traditional TV viewers have been streaming significantly more video, while the heaviest Internet video streamers are spending less time than average viewing TV in the traditional way.
This “significant, but small” subset of Nielsen’s sample viewing population is led by those aged 18-34. Nielsen offers the following as perspective, “More than 1/3 of the TV/Internet population is not streaming, whereas less than 1% are not watching TV.”
