• by Joe Mandese , April 13, 2006

About 20 percent of the adult U.S. population -- 43.7 million persons 18+ -- watched TV in unmeasured, out of home locations during the average week, according to a Fall 2005 survey released this morning by Total TV Audience Monitor. The researcher said the unduplicated out-of-home is now 20 percent greater than the 36.3 million U.S. adults it estimated to be viewing in out- of-home locations in 2003.

The amount of time the average out-of-home viewer spends watching TV, has also grown, according to the new study.

“Adult viewers watching TV outside the home average 9.5 hours of [out-of- home] viewing per week, an increase from 7.3 [hours] in 2004 and 6.5 hours in 2003,” the company said, adding, “The largest segment of the [out-of- home] audience comes from college locations. More than 11 million college students are watching [out-of-home] and averaging 12.5 hours of [out-of- home] TV viewing per week.”

The study, which is the third conducted by T-TAM, comes as Nielsen Media Research plans to increase its representation of viewing in out-of-home locations. Nielsen has already announced plans to begin incorporating the away-from-home viewing of college students who are part of Nielsen households into its sample, and is exploring other venues, such as vacation homes.

Advertisers and agencies generally welcome the addition of such viewing estimates, but are loath to incorporate viewing in certain out-of-home locations, such as bars, restaurants and hotels for fear that it would inflate the value of TV ratings currency, and because of concerns about the nature of viewing in those locations.

The new T-TAM study, conducted during the four-week period of October 6 to November 2, 2005, also found that out-of-home TV audiences tend to skew younger: about two-thirds (65%) of the out-of-home audience in the average quarter hour is between the ages of 18-34.

The report also asserts that much of that audience is incremental, noting, “Fully one-third (33 percent) of the 18 to 34 year old audience that watches TV our-of-home in the average week, does not watch anywhere else.”