Get Ready For Hysteria

After a decade of irresponsibly reporting the death of TV viewing, the clueless news media are sure to go into full hysteria mode after the release of Nielsen's latest cross-platform report.

Last week, Nielsen reported that in the 3rd quarter of 2013, average daily total TV viewing among all Americans (including live TV and DVR playback) dropped by 3 minutes. Ohmygod!

Daily TV viewing in the 3rd quarter dropped from 286 minutes a day (4 hours and 46 minutes) to 283 minutes a day (4 hours and 43 minutes.)

This is the first time since 2009 there has been a downward movement in viewing.

Of course, the media never reported on the upward movement. It went against the "narrative" they invented years ago.

Even for dimwits like us, there is apparently only so much time in the day we can spend watching TV. It looks like 4 3/4 hours is about our limit. I guess we need time to do other important things like take selfies and try to get on HealthCare.gov. 

Having stuck all these years to the narrative that TV was dying, the media are sure to trumpet this downward tick as proof of the correctness of their ongoing misrepresentation of consumer behavior.

Since this is also likely to be twisted out of all proportion by online advertising hustlers and careless bloggers, here is some perspective from the Nielsen report:

• People spend almost 7 times as much time watching TV as they do on line.

• People spend 23 times as much time watching video on television as they do watching video on the web.

• People spend 27 times as much time watching video on TV as they do on a mobile phone.

• People spend almost 3 times as much time listening to radio as they do on the web.

But don't let the facts influence you. Traditional media are dead. I know because I read it on line.