Nielsen just published The Total Audience Report for the third quarter of 2014 in which they look in detail at how Americans are getting their entertainment. They define entertainment broadly and include things like web browsing on computers and cellphones. But they do not count voice calling or texting, which are communications. This report concentrates on the time that people spend on different devices. The report looks at the data in a number of different ways and I found a few of the comparisons to be quite interesting.
The report shows that the way we are accessing entertainment is changing rapidly. Consider the following statistics comparing the number of hours per day that the average person uses various devices , for the third quarters of 2012 and 2014 (in hours and minutes):
‘ 3Q 2012 3Q 2014
Watch Live TV 4:50 4:32
Watch Time Shift TV 0:24 0:32
Watch DVD / Blu-Ray 0:09 0:09
Use a Game Console 0:09 0:12
Use Internet on a Computer 1:04 1:06
Use a Smartphone 0:53 1:33
Listen to AM/FM Radio 2:51 2:44
Use a Multimedia Device 0:00 0:04
The total time spent by the average person doing these activities increased over the two years from 10 hours and 20 minutes to 10 hours and 52 minutes. The time spent watching traditional TV and listening to AM/FM radio dropped while everything else stayed the same or climbed. The most dramatic shift was in the use of smartphones for entertainment which grew by 75% in just two years.
It’s also interesting to look at these same statistics by age group. Consider the following that shows weekly statistics for the average person in three different age groups (in hours and minutes):
‘ 18 – 24 35 – 49 65+
Watch Live TV 17:34 29:41 47:13
Watch Time Shift TV 1:43 3:40 3:19
Watch DVD / Blu-Ray 0:46 1:08 0:37
Use a Game Console 3:35 1:03 0:07
Use Internet on a Computer 4:54 7:22 2.48
Watch Video on Internet 1:46 1:48 0:26
Using an App on Smartphone 9:40 9:39 1:16
Watch Video on Smartphone 0:29 0:14 0:00
Listen to AM/FM Radio 10:30 13:48 12:06
Use a Multimedia Device 0:38 0:30 0.13
This shows a dramatic difference by age for watching traditional TV. The younger you are, the less TV you watch. Young people in the 18-34 age group watch 63% less TV than those over 65 while 35-49 year olds watch TV 37% less. It’s the dramatic decrease in TV viewing by younger viewers that has the TV industry worried. This is certainly going to mean a major shift in advertising dollars away from TV, something that has recently become noticeable. And this same trend of caring less about TV might be what breaks the traditional cable model rather than cord cutters. Young people still watch TV, but a lot less than older generations.
There is also a huge difference between generations in terms of total hours spent using these devices. The 18–24 year-olds spend 51 hours and 20 minutes per week, those 35-49 spend 68 hours and 20 minutes, and those over 65 spend 68 hours and 6 minutes.
People under age 50 have made a dramatic shift to using their smartphones for entertainment, be that playing games, browsing the web or shopping. Both the 18-24 year olds and the 35-49 year olds use their smartphones over 9 hours per week. Interestingly, I have read a lot of articles talking about how smartphone video usage is growing rapidly and will eventually swamp other kinds of viewing, but these numbers don’t support that contention. This shows that even those in the 18-24 group are watching video on the smartphones less than a half-four per week on average. Certainly usage of smartphones in general is way up, but they still only represent a very tiny sliver of the market for watching video.
These charts also reminded me how much people still listen to AM/FM radio. I listen to Sirius XM radio in my car since I am a talk radio junky and I haven’t listened to regular radio in years. But these numbers still show that all age groups are listening to the radio more than 10 hours per week.