In what likely is the quaintest media universe insight
to come out of the Advertising Research Foundation's DASH service, its most recent data reveals that the vast majority of U.S. households (86%) still have a conventional TV set in their living room
and that it is the most-watched set in the home among them.
The finding is not exactly a "more things change, the more they remain the same" insight, because the report also shows marked fragmentation as TV sets proliferate in other rooms, especially bedrooms (see
above).
Interestingly, only 6% of rooms classified as a "media room" have a TV set in them. I'm not sure what that is about, but perhaps the most significant insight is that it's not just
about the fragmentation of rooms in American households, but about the fragmentation of TV set operating systems within those rooms.
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"In 63% of households with both a living room TV and a
bedroom TV, the two sets are different brands," the DASH report notes (see chart below), adding, "That means data generated by the living room TV’s OEM will not capture viewing that occurs on
the bedroom set. The pattern holds even for the big manufacturers: 56% of households with a Brand A television in the living room have a different brand in the bedroom."
The finding raises
many questions that the DASH report itself is not designed to answer, including how TV viewing experiences differ among the different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), as well as how the data
from those sets are aggregated and integrated into various TV measurement services.
