TV Viewership Continues to Beat Multimedia Devices

Nielsen is reporting that, according to 4Q 2014 data, Viewers spent on average per month:

155.5 hours watching TV on an actual TV – or on average about 5 hours per day – indicating TV Viewership levels have remained steady
15 hours in time-shifted /DVR/ watching (this means people are watching regularly scheduled programming 10 TIMES more than “DVR’ing it.”)
34 hours using mobile viewing and
28 hours via the internet on desktops.

Video viewing on multimedia devices (phones, tablets) accounts for only an hour and 12 minutes per month. Nielsen also found that for traditional TV/Cable, people stick to a fairly narrow range of viewing, regardless of the many channels available. In 2008 there were 129 channels available and in 2013 it was up to 190 but the average number of channels watched has remained constant at 17.

We’re learning that, though second-screen viewing is big, it doesn’t necessarily indicate fragmentation against TV. 41% of people used tablets and smartphones to look up info about the characters or shows they’re watching. 29% are emailing and texting about the show and 18% are reading social media comments.

And Twitter reports 36 million people sent 990 million tweets about TV last year and the Twitter TV audience for an episode is 50 times larger than the number of authors generating the tweets. The content suggests the tweets are about the ads viewers are seeing just as much as they are about the TV shows.