Graph of how many people watch tv

Follow Quartz. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. From our Obsession. Media are best understood as a competition for attention on internet-connected screens. Phones, tablets, laptops, monitors, TVs—it's all just glass.

By Sonali Kohli. We start off in what looks like an entirely different world. The Cosby Show reigns supreme with Also, viewers in are obsessed with sitcoms. With the exception of Murder, She Wrote and Dallas , the top 10 is otherwise filled with them. NBC is firmly in control, with four of the top five.

Quickly, the ratings start leveling off. By the lates, most of the top 10 has viewership hovering in the 20 millions, whereas in , the average top 10 show reached the 40 millions. By , Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond are the only top 10 sitcoms still standing. The viewing community had barely gotten used to the fact that HBO can put out something as culturally relevant as The Sopranos , and now Showtime has a hit? This data seems to lend support to the notion that digital video is complementing more than replacing traditional TV , as total video hours continue to grow.

The SVOD vs. Nevertheless, the above data offers some insights as to why the industry is abuzz over digital video and not traditional TV. Whether or not one agrees that Millennials are a more valuable demographic than, say, Baby Boomers these financial stats might suggest otherwise , the online TV viewing audience is probably the choice for most marketers today, if all of the hullabaloo about Millennials is to be trusted. But it is worth noting the increasing prevalence of TV-connected devices.

Their growth has been documented recently here and here. But year-old users of TV-connected devices spent an average of 4. Still, the latest Total Audience Report indicates that year-olds spend about as much time with multimedia devices as they do with gaming consoles, suggesting that a large portion of the more than 11 hours per week that year-old users spend with TV-connected devices is spent watching video. The following are some other takeaways from the Q4 Comparable Metrics report the latest available specific to the bracket:.

The Total Audience Report for Q3 analyzed media consumption and device ownership patterns by household income, with some interesting conclusions highlighted below.

As those results demonstrate, the penetration gaps are larger among newer technologies and services. This again was true for all media measured:. Overall, TV accounts for a larger share of total media time for the lowest-income households than the highest, with this attributed to lower-income adults watching TV more throughout the day.

When looking at time-of-day activity not specific to users of each medium :. Twin pieces of research released by TDG back in illustrated this potential phenomenon. But, in a separate survey of year-old broadband users who had moved into a non-college residence, TDG found only about 1 in 10 saying they had never signed up for a cable or satellite service after moving out on their own for the first time.

If nothing else, this is a solid argument for not treating Millennials as a homogenous group…. From those results, one could surmise that as Millennials get their own place, at least some drop DVRs and DVDs in favor of multimedia devices and SVOD services, while the opposite trend occurs when they have kids. The presence of children seems to have some impact on pay-TV penetration, as across all Millennial age brackets , , penetration was higher among those living in their own with children than those living in their own home without children.

The pattern, though, translates into live TV consumption also. The MarketingCharts report on media audience demographics — which not only sizes the audience by demographic but also shows the breakdown of audiences in a way not portrayed by Nielsen e. Sponsor Permissions : Check this box to agree to receiving communications from our Sponsors, where applicable, as per our Privacy Policy.