Neilsen put out its annual report on TV viewing for 2006. The findings were pretty straight forward and expected.
On average, homes now receive more than 100 channels.
On average, homes tuned in to 15.7 channels.
On average, homes watched TV for 57 hours and 37 minutes per week. Which is an INCREASE of 20 minutes over last year. So depsite all the discussion to the contrary, people are watching more TV now, not less.
Which raises the question, “If people spend more time watching fewer channels in a growing channel universe, why do we expect that people will prefer unlimited choice ?”
Of course the first response is to point to the number of visitors to Youtube. According to Comscore data provided to BusinessWeek, 30.35 million people visited Youtube in the month of January 07.