• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 21, 2011

Acccording to new data from The Nielsen Company, State of the Media 2010, the average US household has 2.5 TV sets, with 1.9 standard definition TVs and 0.6 high-definition TVs. Furthermore, Nielsen data shows that HDTV households have more sets than the national average. 31% of Americans own four or more TVs.

Average Number of TV Sets Per U.S. Household
	All Sets	Standard Definition	High Definition
Total US	2.5	2.6	0.9
SD homes	2.1	2.1
HD Homes	2.7	1.2	1.5
Source: the Nielsen Company, January 2011

The average American watches 35.6 hours of TV week, or close to the equivalent of a full-time job. Looking at age demographics, Americans older than 65 watch an average of 48.9 hours of TV each week. In contrast, Americans age 2-11 watch an average of 25.8 hours of TV per week.

TV Watched
Age group	Hours Watched/Week
Adults over 65	48.9
Average Americans	35.6
Kids 2-11	25.8
Source: the Nielsen Company, January 2011

The percentage of consumers with broadband internet access but no cable TV remained fairly consistent between January 2008 (3.2%) and January 2010 (3.9%). Meanwhile, the percentage of consumers with both broadband internet access and cable TV grew about 21%, from 54.8% to 66.3%. This suggests few consumers are attempting to splice their cable broadband internet access to obtain free cable TV

Broadband & Cable Ownership (% of Population)
	% of Population
Installed	Jan 2008	Jan 2009	Jan2010
Broadband only	3.2	3.9	3.9
Cable & Broadband	54.8	61.6	66.3
Source: the Nielsen Company, January 2011

 

Television Purchase Plans (In Next 12 Months; North America)
Intent	% of Respondents
Definitely will purchase	3%
Probably will purchase	3
Might of might not	16
Probably won't	17
Definitely won't	59
Source: the Nielsen Company, January 2011

Additional TV Findings

• 115.9 million US homes have at least one TV.
• 104.7 million US homes are satellite and/or cable TV-ready.
• 100.2 million US homes have a DVD player.
• 70.6 million US homes have a VCR.
• 65 million US TVs are HD-compatible.
• 55.6 million US homes have digital cable.
• 43.1 million US homes have a DVR.
• 34.7 million US homes have satellite TV.

Other recent Nielsen data indicates that comparing the demographic household makeup of prime-time US TV viewers, households which delay the viewing of TV shows with a DVR are more likely to be wealthy.

For example, 30% of households engaging in DVR playback have an annual income of $100,000 or more, compared to about 25% of DVR households watching a prime-time show live and only 15% of all households watching live TV. Conversely, 22% of all live TV households have an annual income of less than $25,000.

Finally, considering emerging media devices owned and planned purchases, computers with high speed internet occupy the major penetration among "connected consumers" in the US.

Emerging Media Devices (Ownership and Purchase Intent; % of Connected Consumers)
Device	% Owning	% Definitely/Probably will Buy
Computer with HS Internet	75%	5%
HDTV	46	10
DVR	35	9
Handheld multimedia device	20	5
TV with internet connection	14	7
Devices that connect TV to internet	10	7
Netbooks	9	6
EBook readers	5	7
Tablets	<1	6
3D TV	<1	6
Source: the Nielsen Company, January 2011

For additional details and data from Nielsen, please visit here.