Number of TVs > number of people

September 23, 2006

I know we take television pretty seriously in this country, but I didn’t quite expect this.

The average American home now has more [tag]television[/tag] sets than people. That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to [tag]Nielsen[/tag] Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said.

With televisions now on buses, elevators and in airport lobbies, that development may have as much to do with TV’s ubiquity as an appliance as it does conspicuous consumption. The popularity of flat-screen TVs now make it easy to put sets where they haven’t been before.

Rick Melen, a facilities manager, has three sets in the Somers, N.Y., home he shares with his wife. That doesn’t count the bathroom set that broke down and hasn’t been replaced or the speakers installed near their hot tub, allowing them to watch a wide screen set through a window.

Did he say bathroom?

According to the Nielsen study, half of American homes have three or more TVs. In the average household, a TV is turned on for more than a third of the day (eight hours, 14 minutes). The average person watches four hours, 35 minutes of television each day. All of these numbers are up considerably from just a decade ago.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not a reflexive [tag]TV[/tag]-basher. I enjoy a few shows and frequently find TV writing to be even better than movie writing. For me, good television can be just as fulfilling as anything in the arts.

Nevertheless, I find these numbers a little frightening.

It gets back to something we were talking about a month ago. In the United States, the electorate is woefully uninformed and unengaged, and when asked, most people say they simply don’t have time to follow current events, learn about candidates, and/or participate in civic affairs in any way (that includes voting).

My counter-argument is they do have time, but they decide it’s more important to leave the TV on for literally a third of the day than it is to, say, read a newspaper.

Call it a hunch, but I suspect that when the typical household has its sets on eight hours and 14 minutes on any given day, C-SPAN is not the channel of choice.

You need 3 TV’s per household to keep up with all of the reruns of the various incarnations of Law & Order!

100 channels and nothing’s on, but we are sure as hell going to get all of it we pay for.

  • No TV for me, though I do watch several shows on DVDs I play on my laptop.

    I watched upwards of 5 hours of TV a day growing up, but made the switch to TV-free after college, when I couldn’t afford cable. I found pretty quickly that I didn’t miss it. Much.

    That said, I became addicted to shows like Buffy, Alias, Lost and Freaks and Geeks. I’d watch more — Sopranos, Deadwood, Firefly — but it’s tough to find time (or $) to rent DVDs now that I’ve got a wee one.

    I’m sure we’ll let him watch some TV, if we can ever afford to get cable, but there’s no way in hell that I’d let him have a TV in his room.

    Still not sure how we’re going to deal with the whole computer in the room thing…

  • That would explain why so many Americans don’t care about Herr Bush’s “criminalities”—they’re too busy being wound up in a hybrid blend of Harrison Bergeron’s dumbing down, Fahrenheit 451’s interactive programming, and 1984’s Orwellian media-spin. It gives the sheeple ample opportunities to hear different talking-heads, on different channels, saying the exact same thing….

  • Back in grad school, in the late ’60s, I watched one of Hubert Humphrey’s speeches on TeeVee. As soon as it was over I couldn’t have told you a thing he said. Sometime after that I happened to hear a radio re-broadcast of the same speech. Days later I could recall virtually every point he made.

    I’m convinced that TeeVee is, physically, a dumbing down device. Vision dominates all other aspects. The occipital lobe, which controls vision, is about the size of a dime; compared to the cerebral cortex, it’s nothing. It’s primitive. IFight or flight is the choice it offers us, not ponder and remember and criticize. You think Harry Truman or FDR could get elected through today’s communication technology?

  • When I heard that same news item about the average number of TVs per household exceeding the average number of people per household, I did a little counting. I came up with four TVs in our house, for just two people! We are not heavy TV watchers, we just have a lot of TVs.

    Here’s another way of looking at it: As people’s homes get larger (i.e., there are more and more rooms), and the price (and size) of TVs comes down, it’s not surprising that people purchase more and more televisions. They are now affordable enough that you can put one in each room where someone, sometime, might watch it.

    We have books in virtually every room of our house as well, but that doesn’t mean we spend more time reading than we did when we had books in only a few rooms.

    I realize this argument doesn’t account for all of the variance, but the “chicken little” reaction is (imo) very much overblown.

  • Adding to DrGail’s comment, here’s another way the reaction is overblown.

    My household has one human in it (but not me, oddly…) but two television sets. Whoa! I must be gazing at the boob-tube 24/7, right? Or maybe… the second TV was a replacement for the first, being newer and larger, and the first, smaller set never gets used anymore.

    In other words, the number of TV sets in the house increases as new TVs replace old ones, but the old ones still have some utility left, so they get put in secondary locations: childrens’ bedrooms, bathrooms, workshops, etc.

  • This is the first time in known history a person can be born, grow up, live until they die without experiencing anything in real life. TV even has a channel for infants now.
    There are two books every person ought to live: “Brave New World”, and “1984”. They cover the whole issue.
    The current conversion of one’s computer into the TV even adds the genuine possiblity of total loss of privacy for any and all. Spyware is used in corporations to monitor employee’s emails. How difficult would it be for the powers that be to follow suit?

  • I call my set in the bathroom “Crapper-Vision”. It allows you to complete your business without being rushed in order to maintain the continuity of whatever program you’re watching (an essential for public affairs reports).

  • I disagree sojmewhat with this assessment. Because people with bigger houses aren’t going to limit their TV time to one or two rooms in the house. My folks who have finally shed the last of us kiddiepoos still have their biggish house with five TV’s in it. But that’s because there are TV’s in two of the bedrooms, in the den, and in the kitchen; as well as the one in the regular TV room. But there’s still only two TV’s on at the most, and it’s usually the same two TV’s. They just have the other TV’s in case they want to be in those other rooms. And the TV in the small bedroom is only used when guests are visiting and want to watch TV in their room.

    But this doesn’t reflect an increase in TV watching; but merely an increase in comfort. They watch TV in the room that they want to be in. And that just makes sense. They do not have a TV in the bathroom however (though there is a phone in one (and yes, I have unwittingly spoken with people on the crapper before)).

  • We have two TVs in our house. Of course, we don’t have cable and, quite frankly, the only thing I really watch is sports (my two-year old son is a freak for football, baseball and, his favorite, basketball). I also have a PS2 and Xbox, so I find having a TV necessary.

    But, for the most part, I honestly think that TV has had the effect of dumbing down our entire society. It also keeps people more preoccupied by American Idol than politics — which is the way our leaders want it, IMHO.

  • In our house we have 5 TV’s for 3 people but in agreence with Unholy Moses i have an Xbox 360 and PS2 hooked up on different TV’s at all times the we have tivo so we can watch wut we want. My family have lots of TV’s including my Uncle who has 11 Tv’s in his house for 7 people!!! (thats maybe a little to far)!

    • Comments are closed.