Young Men Playing With, Not Watching TV

Remember all the hullaballoo over the research that said young men are not watching TV then the follow up that said they were (see related links)? Now the suggestion is that young men are watching TV and using it to play games but that this is not yet measured by traditional outfits like Nielsen. From the Media Life Magazine article:

"Those 18-34 men were doing other things in the time they once spent watching the broadcast networks. But they hadn't abandoned their TV sets.

They were simply using their sets for other forms of entertainment, according to a new study from Mediaedge:cia.

And what are they using their sets for? Playing video games, watching DVDs and watching previously recorded TV shows, all activities not tracked by Nielsen Media Research.

Were Nielsen to track such activity, the report concludes, TV usage would not be down among young viewers but up, and up dramatically over the past five years: 22 percent among teens, 19 percent among 18-24s, and 18 percent among men 18-34.

As it is, teens are off 3 percent, 18-24s off 2 percent, and men 18-34s down 3 percent in that span.

'The idea was to see, with all the new technology, competition and all the rest, whether TV remains the focal point of entertainment in the household,' says Lyle Schwartz, director of research and marketplace analysis for Mediaedge:cia. 'We found that the usage for watching TV programming continues to be high. It’s basically flat or up or down 1 percent each year.

'But the interesting part is that consumers are using TV sets for more and more options.'"

Related:

Guys Still Love The Boob Tube
Young Men Rule the Internet
The Case of the Missing Young Men, Ctd.

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