Television valta

Amerikkalaiset katsovat telkkaria yli nelja tuntia paivassa ja telkkari on paalla yli kahdeksan tuntia paivittain. Kodeissa on enemman televisioita kuin ihmisia; melkein joka huoneessa on vastaanotin. Ei ihme etta ne, jotka omistavat median, omistavat kansalaisten mielen. (Varsinkin, kun suurin osa ohjelmista on puppua ja tyhjan taytetta, jotta saataisiin mainokset nakyviin.)

TVs taking over in U.S. homes

By DAVID BAUDER The AssociatedPress

NEW YORK — The average U.S. home has more television sets than people.
That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said.

Rick Melen, a facilities manager, has three sets in the Somers, N.Y., home he shares with his wife. That doesn't count the bathroom set that broke down and hasn't been replaced or the speakers installed near their hot tub, allowing them to watch a wide-screen set through a window.

"It's really just a matter of where your living takes place, what rooms you tend to spend your time in," Melen said Thursday. "Other appliances you can move from room to room, but if you have cable, you can't move a television."

Also, the popularity of flat-screen TVs makes it easy to put sets where they haven't been before.
Half of U.S. homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent have just one, Nielsen said. In 1975, 57 percent of homes had only one set and 11 percent had three or more, the company said.

David and Teresa Leon, of Schenectady, N.Y., and their 4-year-old twins have seven sets, plus an eighth they haven't set up yet. They include TVs in the parents' and kids' bedrooms, the family and living rooms and one in the kitchen that is usually tuned to a news station.
"No one ever sits down for more than a few seconds in this house," said Teresa Leon, a stenographer. "This way you can watch TV while you're moving from room to room, folding laundry or taking care of the kids."

In the average home, a television set is on for more than one-third of the day: 8 hours, 14 minutes, Nielsen said. That's an hour more than it was a decade ago.
The average person watches 4 hours, 35 minutes of television each day, Nielsen said.
One new Nielsen finding — that young people 12 to 17 watched 3 percent more television during the season that ended in May than they had the previous year — is a particular relief to TV network executives.

For a few years, Nielsen had found that TV viewing among teenagers was flat or declining, a trend blamed on the Internet or the popularity of electronic games and other devices.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company