Daily Diet: Five Hours of Television

Stelter, Brian. “In American’s Daily Diet: Nearly Five Hours of Television.” Media Decoder. 10 November 2009. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/

SUMMARY:

The New York Times reported that the average American spent almost five hours a day in front of the TV. Television viewings have increased. Not only do most Americans spend this much time dedicated to the TV, but also most TVs are actually turned on for eight hours and twenty-one minutes each day. This article was pretty short, but got the point a crossed that television views are steadily increasing. It is said that only one-fifth as much time is spent on the Internet as watching TV. “People may be spending time watching video online, downloading torrents, playing video games, and whatever else, but they’re continuing to watch more TV on average as well.” Compared to ten years ago the viewings have gone up twenty percent.

RESPONSE:

It’s remarkable how much television one person can consume. I realize that people get addicted to a certain show and feel like they can’t miss an episode or find a need to get “caught-up” in watching every previous episode they missed before their addiction started, but five hours a day is amazing! (In a sort of bad way – yet amusing). I don’t understand where people find time in their lives to watch this much television. I myself don’t watch that much television, but do find how it could get addicting when I spend time with my younger brother eagerly watching How It’s Made, the Discovery Channel, and of course the Disney Channel. But these numbers are unbelievable; it seems like everyone is always very busy and involved in the community and work, so this truly doesn’t make sense to me. I hope that this average contains very few yet extreme outliers that influence the average. Yet TV has more to offer. There are now more entertaining and educational shows. You can find football games, even high school football games, as well as church programs and educational shows on the TV, so the increase may be justifiable, but not necessary.