Commentary
Streaming Consumption Overtakes Live TV, TV Time-Spent Below Pre-Pandemic Level
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, September 24, 2021
The number of Americans who stream TV content has slightly surpassed the number who watch live TV: 83% versus 81%, according to Attest’s 2021 U.S. Media Consumption survey, conducted among 2,000 U.S. adults in June.
Meanwhile, time spent watching TV is not only below 2020’s inflated pandemic levels, but significantly …
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Karlene Lukovitz is editor of MediaPost's "Digital News Daily" and writes the weekly "Video Insider" and "Advanced TV Insider" columns. You can reach her at karlene@mediapost.com.
Karlene, a better headline fior this article would be "Study Shows Gains For Streaming Vs. Live TV". Instead, the article contains lots of information from this study which, when compared with other information---like what Nielsen's meters are reporting---raises questions about the validity of the study findings.
Ed - the fact that you are talking about differences in Nielsen numbers that we know are wrong is surprisng to me. Nielsen has been had their MRC accredation removed because we know the numbers are wrong.
If you compare this new research to that of what ComScore just released, the numbers are withing a 3% +/- difference so in mind are believeable
Gabe, the MRC does not and never has determined whether the findings of any audience measurement service it monitors are right or wrong. That impossible job isn't MRC's mission and they certainly haven't made any such statement about Nielsen recently. To your point about the ComScore data, I just responded to your post about this on Linkedin. There you stated that straming activity has surpassed "linear TV" and cited this finding from ComScore for June: 82 million homes averaged 100 hours each in streaming activity. You didn't cite comparable data---which ComScore can give you---- for all TV activity---so I made an approximation. Assuming that the average TV home "watches" 6-7 hours per day that works out to let's call it 121 million homes with 195 hours of total TV activity per home versus 82 million homes averaging 100 hours each for streaming. That results in a streaming share of about 36% which is not unlike Nielsen's recent findings--around 30% --- and my ComScore numbers were approximated. Even if one source says that streaming's share is , say 33% and the other says it's 30% that's hardly a gigantic disparity; such differences are to be expected when comparing different surveys. If, however, ComScore was claiming that streaming now garners 55% of all set activity while Nielsen was reporting only findings in the low 30s that would be a cause for concern---but that is not the case as far as I can see.