Tuesday, March 6, 2007

That's Not True - Now Get out of the way, I can't see the TV

My wife and I limit our son's TV viewing. He gets a show (1/2 hour) in the morning and one in the evening. He gets his shows off of PBS (we LOVE Curious George and Clifford) and HBO (Postman Pat and his black-and-white cat, Jess) so he does not get commercials (another benefit of TiVo and why every parent should get one when they leave the hospital).

My wife and I watch a fair amount of the tube, but again, TiVo has changed the way we watch TV. My wife commented the other day, she is not sure when shows are on anymore as we rarely watch "live TV" anymore.

From the pages of Spirit Magazine, the following statistic caught my eye. As I was flying, I was not watching TV at the time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical American "consumes" 3,518 hours of media in a year (there are 8,760 hours in a year). This includes cable television, broadband, movies, books, magazines, and newspapers. A figure that computes to about $936 per person per year.

The Census Bureau broke it out as follows:
  • Watching TV - 65 days
  • Listening to the radio - 41 days
  • Reading newspapers and magazines - 7 days
  • Listening to recorded music - 7 days
  • All other media activities - 26 days

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