According to Nielsen, 95 percent of Americans watch TV in their living rooms. The company decided to examine what the other 5 percent are doing and got some interesting results.
“This small group of video enthusiasts is tuning out traditional TV — and the trend is growing,” the company reports. “This ‘Zero-TV’ group, which makes up less than 5 percent of U.S. households, has bucked tradition by opting to get the information they need and want from non-traditional TV devices and services.”
Nielsen’s Fourth-Quarter 2012 Cross-Platform Report says the U.S. has more than 5 million Zero-TV households in 2013, up from just over 2 million in 2007. While most of these households don’t fit Nielsen’s traditional definition of a TV household, they still view video content.
It’s worth noting that the TV set itself hasn’t been thrown out in most cases, and more than 75 percent of these homes still have at least one TV set for things like DVDs, games or web surfing. However, when it comes to video content, a growing amount of these households are using other devices.
“The average American spends more than 41 hours each week — nearly five-and-a-half hours daily — engaging with content across all screens,” Nielsen notes. “They spend most of that time (more than 34 hours) in front of a TV, and consumers spend three of those TV hours watching time-shifted content. Viewing behavior varies by ethnicity, however: the average African-American spends close to 55 hours, Hispanics just over 35 hours and Asian Americans spend more than 27 hours.”
Source: Nielsen.com