Interesting to see that the TV sets/home has risen 18% since 2000, and there’s now more TV sets in the United States than people.
New findings from Nielsen’s Television Audience Report show that in 2009 the average American home had 2.86 TV sets, which is roughly 18% higher than in 2000 (2.43 sets per home), and 43% higher than in 1990 (2.0 sets). In addition, there continue to be more TVs per home than people – in 2009 the average U.S. home had only 2.5 people vs 2.86 television sets.
This year about 54% of homes in the U.S. had more than 3 or more television sets, 28% had 2 television sets and only 18% had 1 television set.
Other Key Stats
There are 114.5 million TV homes in the U.S. in 2009
- 38% of U.S. TV homes have digital cable.
- 88% have a DVD player, while VCR fell to 72%.
- 82% of homes have more than 1 television set.
- 11% of U.S. TV homes only have the capability to receive TV reception “over the air”. These homes have neither cable nor ADS.
via Nielsen Wire.
Download the entire Nielsen report here.
Should that be a surprise? We have a TV in practically every room. Our son and daughter are grown and they each had TVs in their rooms and then our daughter went off to college and needed a TV there and brought it back and moved overseas so she could not take her extra one with her. Then we had to buy a digital TV, just because…and I have a tiny battery operated analog TV that I used to use when the power went out that doesn’t work any more and when the price comes down and they make a tiny one that is digital I’ll probably get one of those (tornado area). These were accumulated over twenty or so years but it all adds up and amazingly they all work.
I’m surprised the percentage of ‘over the air’ only homes is so low. I’d be curious to see a chart explaining how the over the air to cable transition has taken place over the years. Also surprised that many people are willing to pay for television. What’s on that’s worth paying for anyway?
Does the 38% of homes that have “Digital Cable” include Satellite carriers as well?
The surprising number to me is the amount of people that still have a VCR. I haven’t had a VCR in my household since my TV/VCR combo went T.U. about 7 years ago. DVD’s are so cheap why wouldn’t people have upgraded by now? Hell, I’ve moved on to Blu ray.
Chris, we still have a VCR in my house. It hasn’t been used in years, but it’s still there, and as far as I know, still works. Perhaps a lot of other people in America are packrats like my family.
Chris, I think that digital cable % is just digital cable, not satellite.
the only line you omitted from the copy/paste was the link to the full report that definitively answers that question! It’s definitely just digital cable, separately they have direct broadcast satellite in 27 million homes (see page 3). Lots of good info just in that chart, including a breakout of the HD viewing estimates.
There’s a lot more good info in the report including share of viewing for broadcast, cable, independent, etc., and not just for primetime but for total day and other day parts as well. Conan vs. Dave, vs. Jimmy? Bah. In 2007-2008, ad supported cable had a 64% share of late night viewing! (see page 19). I could go on, but…
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/tva_2008_071709.pdf
Despite it making OTA TV more desirable, I think the switch to ATSC reduced the number of OTA watchers substantially because the choices were either buy a convertor box, buy a new TV, or subscribe to cable. The cable and satellite companies made a big deal of this. Add to that those for whom a convertor box wasn’t enough (because of different reception footprints) and many people who were OTA felt compelled to switch, while many of those who weren’t didn’t switch back.
Still, it dropping to 11% is remarkable, I heard until recently the figure was supposed to be around 25% of households were OTA only. Now the dust has settled, and people are finding OTA gives them near cinema quality video, I wonder whether the cable and satellite figures will start to erode, especially with the economy we’re in.
Indeed. Entire report linked above now as well. I will be mining it for bits of data to post for the next 2 weeks!
thats so true
we have a tv in every room of our house and couple extra just lying around and my neighbor has at least at least 6 tvs and he lives alone i never see vhs players anymore we have one but its attached to a dvd player and i think any ones used it since we got it
but do you know how many people have blu-ray players so far
its probably not much but it would still be nice to know
squiggle, over the air viewing was at about 25% in 2000 (I will post that chart tomorrow!). As for a substantial reduction in OTA because of the analog cut off, it may very well be a sharp reduction in the % of people who were getting OTA, but it will be only a few percent of the entire TV audience.
Will TV become like the cylons & try & take over now ?
people still have home videos. they need the vcr to see their wedding
Does this include television sets that are not hooked up?
I guess I’m below average by these stats (or above, depending on POV). I have 2 sets… one is a paper weight in the garage (doesn’t work) and the other is well past legal drinking age (26 years and counting) and is not HDTV ready (DVD and VCR talk to it just fine, though). What shows I do watch I view either on the show’s website (when available) or buy season DVD packs after research and conversations with folks I know who share my viewing tastes.
People are going to be extinct
and TV will replace people
I realize that you’re probably not going to get at this kind of data, but: With that number of sets per household, not all of them are likely to get their signal from the same source. So it would be more interesting to see the percentage of viewing that takes place on OTA sets, rather than just the percentage of OTA homes.