Nielsen today revealed a television trends report which highlights population, television ownership and advertising trends in the United States. This report highlights some interesting facts from 2006 as well as so far into 2007, with the chief most interesting one showing an increase of the number of channels an average home receives.
Nielsen data shows the average home now has 104.2 channels, which is an increase of almost eight channels since 2005. While this number seems to reflect an increase in cable or satellite television penetration into more homes in America, it doesn’t necessary reflect a huge spike in how many channels people are watching. The same Nielsen report indicated the average household tuned to 15.7 of the 104.2 channels available for at least 10 minutes per week. This reflects a slight decrease in the percentage of available channels actually viewed.
In another interesting fact from the Nielsen report, it was mentioned the total number of primetime broadcast programs has decreased slightly since last year. The number of news programs has also declined slightly. General dramas are still the favorite show of viewers, accounting for some half of the current programs.
Nielsen also mentioned there are an average of 111.4 million TV homes in the U.S. for the 2006-07 TV season, 64% of homes have wired cable hook-ups (down from 68% in 2000) , 23% have satellite or specialized antenna systems to receive television signals and 84% of U.S. homes have a DVD player.
