You Are Watching Less *Live* TV

A shared experience: Family watching television, c. 1958 (Photo credit: Wikipedia). 

Here's a nice chart.

Nielsen’s most recent “Total Audience Report” indicates that Americans aged 18-24 watched a weekly average of about 12-and-three-quarter hours of traditional TV during Q2 2017. What does that mean?

It’s now less than 2 hours per day of traditional TV for this young group, the lowest figure yet.

In terms of a year-over-year change, Q2’s figure represents a sizable decline of 2 hour and 25 minutes per week. In other words, 18-24-year-olds as a group went from watching about 2 hours and 10 minutes per day during the second quarter of 2016 to about 1 hour and 49 minutes per day during the second quarter of this year.

The year-over-year decline in traditional TV viewing among the 18-24 population was the largest since Q1 2015.

In sum, between 2012 and 2017, second quarter traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds dropped by almost 10 hours a week, or by roughly 1 hour and 25 minutes per day.

In percentage terms, Q2 traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds was down by a huge 15.7% year-over-year and has now fallen by 43.6% since 2012.

In other words, in the space of 5 years, close to half of this age group’s traditional TV viewing time has migrated to other activities or streaming (more on that to come).