• by Wayne Friedman , March 5, 2014

Traditional TV consumption rose ever so slightly when looking at live and time-shifted viewing.

On a monthly basis, Nielsen Cross-Platform Report for the fourth quarter of 2013 showed that traditional TV viewing was up over 170 minutes/12 seconds versus 168 hours/2 seconds. Live TV was at 155:32, down from 156:24, and time-shifted TV was up at 14:40 versus 12:38.

New mobile device usage continues to rise. For example, “watching a video on the Internet grew nearly two hours per month -- 7:34 versus 5:54. The time spent watching a video on a smartphone climbed to 1 hours and 23 minutes from 1 hour per month.

Looking at average time over an average day for all media, live TV still commanded the most time: 5 hours and 4 minutes. Next was listening to AM/FM radio, 2:46; smartphone usage was at 1:07; Internet usage, 1:01; time-shifted TV viewing 32 minutes, using a game console, 12 minutes; DVD/Blu-Ray, 9 minutes; and “using a multimedia device,” 2 minutes.

While lower than the overall average of all U.S. viewing per month -- over 170 hours of live and time-shifted TV -- young viewers still give a healthy portion of their viewing to traditional TV. Live and time-shifted traditional TV per month comes in at more than 121 hours of TV for adults 18-24 and 147 minutes for 25-34.

The TV advertising group, TVB, says 18-24 viewers' usage was up 1.7% year-to-year for traditional TV and nearly 16% with time-shifted TV on a monthly basis. TVB also says usage of the Internet on a computer for this group was down over 16%, and “watching video on the Internet” was down over 12%.

Overall, Nielsen says there have been downward trends of Internet usage on computers for all content for all U.S. media consumers -- 27 minutes/44 seconds versus 29 minutes/23 seconds coming from fourth-quarter 2013 to fourth-quarter 2012. But smartphone use continues to rise -- at 34 minutes/3 seconds against 27 minutes/22 seconds.

"Watching TV" photo from Shutterstock.

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