• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 21, 2006

How much more video are we able to watch?  Plenty, apparently--especially in the traditional ways.

Seemingly defying entertainment gravity, TV usage is at an all-time high--all while there's a supposed demand for more video on iPods, the Internet, mobile phones, DVRs and video game players.

Nielsen says the viewing time has increased beyond three minutes a day to just about eight and a quarter hours. Prime time is up about a minute, to close to two hours a night.  This isn't new. For over ten years, the trend toward more TV hasn't stopped.

And here's the weird part: With all the talk of young adults using the Internet, video games and mobile phones more, this group's TV usage climbed 3 percent more than in the 2004-2005 season. Specifically, teenage girls are watching more television in the early morning and late evening, up as high as 12 percent.

One wonders if a young entrepreneur were to get into the business of delivering video now through some alternative means, where would he or she target the product.

An entrepreneur needs to seek out times when our eyes are gazing into space or we're grapping with the boredom of day-to-day life reality. Take our sleep time. Wasteful and boring dreams could be replaced by new brain scan reruns of "Sanford & Son."  Boring commuting visuals of bumper-to-bumper traffic could be replaced by holographic reruns on car windshields of "Taxi."

What is this saying about current TV marketing and the quality of programming? Something great must be on right now--and we are missing it.

The marketing of Internet video adds to this. Few people want to be out of the loop, not looking at video on YouTube or other places. Thanks to the Internet, we can now sneak more video time at work.

Work, sleep, commuting--these things don't matter. TV is all important. It's futile to resist. Turn on your TV sets now--even if you are distracted by doing other real-world tasks.  Make your TV programmer happy.