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What's on TV? Television Consumption Trends


The Internet has changed how we consume media every day. New options are being introduced daily for watching television, listening to music and reading magazines, newspapers and books. But how has that changed what we watch, read and listen to? Not a whole lot.
Television has always been a large part of people’s lives, and while how we view television has changed with DVRs, internet viewing and Apple TV, according to the 2012 TVB Media Comparisons Report it still reaches more people each day than any other medium. The survey found that 88.3% of adults 18+ watched television yesterday, compared to 89.5% in the 2010 study.
Yes, the percentage has dropped, but not significantly. Nielsen’s fourth quarter 2012 Cross Platform Report found that TV viewing for the time frame actually grew over the same quarter versus 2011. In addition, adults 25-34 (key Internet users) actually spend 12 times more hours per month watching traditional TV versus Internet videos
The buzz that seems to continue to proliferate the industry is cross platform viewing, 88% of U.S. tablet owners and 86% of smartphone users said they have used the device at least once in the past month while watching TV.
The Internet is the next strongest medium in reach at 73% of adults 18+; this number has grown since 2010’ s reach of 67.5%.
However, before tablets and smartphones were invented, how often were people reading the newspaper or flipping through a magazine while watching TV? And TV still had a good reputation then as an effective medium, so what has changed?
Television viewership is changing by the way new devices enable us to access programs and the ability to watch it live or on-demand. Traditional media is still the most effective medium for reach and awareness building, the devices on which people consume media daily is the difference.
A couple additional figures from the TVB study:
The reach of radio (58.8%), newspaper (36.1%) and magazines (24.8%) dropped in 2010, anywhere from a 1.8% decrease to 3.8%. While these mediums usage are decreasing, they are not falling off the cliff of effectiveness.
What does this mean for advertisers? Advertising across multiple channels is more important now than ever. Effective brand advertising will put your brand in front of consumers in print, on TV and on the internet, and will give your brand better top-of-mind awareness.

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