• by Ken Liebeskind , September 12, 2002

The anniversary of Sept. 11 has spiked media usage, according to an ongoing study by McPheters & Co., a media consultancy and Beta Research.

The latest installment in the study, released this week, says the approach of 9/11 "saw increases in the proportion of the population reporting they are spending more time with media than they did prior to the event."

The study, which has been conducted in ten waves since last October, compares media usage for the time of each wave to before 9/11. "Since last October, media consumption has been up significantly," says Rebecca McPheters, president of McPheters & Co. The biggest gains are in TV and newspapers because "the driver of change has been the demand for news." Radio and the Web have reported smaller gains.

This week's study, which covers August, finds that 31% of American adults spent more time watching TV and reading newspapers than they did prior to 9/11. The increases for radio, magazine and the Web ranged from 11 to 24%.

Network TV viewing was up 33%, while cable was up 22%, presumably because of network's stronger news lineup. Fifty-seven percent of adults watch more news on TV than they did before 9/11, while only 10% watch more non-news programming. Ninety-four percent of the adult population watched news on TV within the past seven days and spent 2.4 hours watching it. They spent 2.9 hours watching other forms of programming over the past seven days.

The study finds newspapers are being read more frequently by adults under 35. Ninety-four percent of adults read a newspaper within the past seven days, the same as watched TV news. There is also a trend toward reading more newspapers, with the average number of papers read by an adult at 1.6 for August.

Magazine has had the lowest increase, with only a slight uptick in August.

News related Websites spiked the growth in Internet use. Twenty-four percent of adults surfed news sites more frequently than before 9/11. Eighty-one percent of adults who have access to the Internet accessed it within the past seven days.

The spike in media usage has an advantage for advertisers. "Advertising is more of a bargain now than it was," McPheters says.