• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 7, 2006

One of the nation's smallest, but most influential media consumer groups - the heads of major corporations - represent a paradox for advertisers and media buyers trying to reach them. Time-starved and sleep-deprived, C-level executives spend a disproportionate amount of their time reading print media, but less than a third of them are using it to read traditional business magazines. That surprising epiphany comes from a not-so-surprising group of magazines who sponsored a study on the habits of America's most elite business people: Golf Digest, The New Yorker and Wired.

How does the C-suite use its sweet spot? Nine out of ten (89%) spend their leisure time reading consumer magazines, the No. 1 activity cited in the report, which was released Wednesday by the publishing troika. Reading newspapers (81%) ranked third behind dining out (82%), while "surfing the Internet" ranked fourth (80%).

The study, which was based on a two-step process of personal interviews and a quantitative survey of 602 C-level executives, does not provide a great deal of information about their media habits, but it does reveals some shifting patterns in both their work and lifestyles. Only 14% of top executives are getting eight or more hours of sleep a night (the mean is 6.8 hours), nearly half wake up before 6 am each morning, and over half retire for the evening after 11 pm.

To view the complete study please visit: www.condenastdirect.com/clevel .