The US television market is stagnating, with new figures from Nielsen Media Research showing that the average US household received 96.4 television channels in 2005, rising by just four from 2004’s figure of 92.6.
According to eMarketer, US consumers are turning away from broadcast channels and spending more time with cable and satellite channels.
In 2005, Americans were shown to have spent more time watching television than ever before, with the average US household consuming 57 hours and 17 minutes of television a week, compared to 56 hours and seven minutes a week in 2004.
Multichannel penetration is on the rise in the UK as well, with digital reception currently at 64.2%, up by 10% from 54.4% at the beginning of 2004, according to the IPA (see UK Digital Penetration At 65%).
Non-terrestrial viewing remained at 30% for the second successive quarter, seeing a year on year increase of 2.5%. The strong bias of the non-terrestrial audience remained a key feature, with 48.5% of under 16s viewing digital channels.
A recent study from TNS and Google looks at TV consumption in the UK compared to the internet, revealing that the average internet user now spends the equivalent of 41 days online each year, compared to 37 days spent watching TV (see Consumers Spend More Time Online Than Watching TV).
The internet’s increasing popularity has led Initiative Media to predict online to be the fastest growing medium in 2006, with UK internet adspend expected to be up by 26.3% year on year in 2006 (see UK Adspend To Rise By 3.7% In 2006).
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