Young Aussies watch nearly 15 hours of TV per week
TV is the main medium consumed by children, a study by Roy Morgan Research suggests.
The Young Australians Survey suggests that the average media-consuming six to 13-year-old spends 14.8 hours a week – more than two hours a day – watching television.
Next came the internet with 7.8 hours a week, then radio with 2.6 hours a week. Newspapers and magazines both accounted for less than an hour a week.
no way. 6-13 year olds don’t really read newspapers.
well, things have changed since my day.
I’ll have you know that by the time I was 13, I was delivering them…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
.. and when I was 13 I was reading the FT and the Economist actually.
Not that it did me much good
I’m wondering – does this include watching TV online?
Shame on their parents!!! They should be outdoors doing things like…delivering news papers and following Tim’s example of how to be come a well adjusted individual and contributing member to our society.
TV makes the best babysitter (kids have only ever read the Sunday paper cartoons) and no of the other mediums compete against TV along these lines
Right, and they say print is not dead. I know these are only young kids being studied here, but I can see these medium usage figures remaining pretty stable as that generation grows up. Compared to their parents generation, there is far more emphasis on TV and Internet for information and entertainment these days, and this will only accelerate as technology and capabilities improve..
Have a hard time seeing these kids growing up and picking up the FR or Australia as opposed to getting news from Huffington Post or the equivalents. I’d say these stats are pretty damning for the print industry in years to come.
I’m wondering that too – do you have the breakdown? I’m assuming this excludes downloads, but what percentage was free to air, streamed and so on..?
The devil is in the detail…
This is a link to Roy Morgan’s info: http://www.roymorgan.com/news/.....2011/1261/
As you’ll see, it’s not the full data -for which you’ll be asked to pay $9950 – which is something of a paywall…
Does 14.8 hours of TV include game time viewed on TV (Wii, PS, Xbox)?
Nobody tell Nestle
i could safely assume most TV viewing is done via, shock, watching the TV.
TV viewing via PC etc is pretty small aside a small proportion of media nerds and digital ppl who tell people otherwise.
But isn’t the interwebs taking over?
While I can’t speak for Morgan I can have some educated guesses to the very good questions asked.
* Online TV would be included in online
* Game time on the large screen (also used for TV) would not be considered as TV
* A finer breakdown may be available from Morgan, but I think you would be beginning to stress the ability of the respondent to answer to this level of detail based on recall (this is not metered data but closely aligns to OzTAM’s 4.25 hours for Kids 5-12 across 2010). For example, when you ask people if they have an HD TV they tend to say yes if they have a flat screen TV and simply don’t know if it is SDTV, HDTV, 1080p, 1080i etc etc.
And Mitch I’m beginning to change my mind that media consumption habits are dictated by your year of birth. For example, when I first started tracking TV usage in the early 90s kids TV usage was a lot lower. When we saw “the birth of the Internet ” in the mid 90s all sorts of perilous warnings based on low 16-24 viewing abounded. You know what … all of them are now in the 25-39 broad demographic now and we’re not seeing massive changes there – that is, over time as people move through lifestages their consumption patterns change again (kids, own home, mortgage etc). Most pundits tend to agree that while Internet usage is impacting other media (obviously duh) that a large component is actually additional usage of media overall – for example TV viewing levels are are basically the same as they were in 1991 give or take a few minutes (but of course that viewing is fragmented across many more channels giving the impression that total TV viewing is dropping). Maybe the moral of the story is that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Hope this helps.
John is correct; online TV is included in Internet and game time is not a part of television viewing.
Whilst no one is suprised by the growth of the Internet amongst young australians, the interesting point is the continued strength of television despite the increase in Internet usage.
More chanels and therefore more choice have been a key reason for television retaining it’s leading share of media usage against kids, who said fragmentation was a bad thing!
3, 4 and 5 year old’s watching free to air? DVD’s – where do they come in – under ‘TV’…?
77% of stats are made up. Nobody asked me who watches and uses what in my house…
@ Anon. DVDs viewing is treated like games – it is “other usage” of a TV set (i.e. it is not broadcast or subscription TV). And yes of course infants watch TV … as Antony commented it makes a great baby-sitter.
And of course the TV ratings are an estimate – and you don’t need to ask everyone to get an acceptably accurate picture of TV viewing levels. The ratings are based on a daily sample of 5,050 households carefully selected to represent the approx. 8.6m households in Australia. This means that around 1-in-1,700 households are contributing at any point in time. Think of it as in your suburb there is a household representing you but it’s not your time yet.
@John Grono. Thanks for that precise answer – very impressive.
How to people get to be part of the analysis when it comes to the TV part?
Anon @ 10:29 “77% of stats are made up. Nobody asked me who watches and uses what in my house…”
Perhaps that’s because you are so bloody stupid.
Research group of 1: my 10 yo niece.
TV went on at breakfast and stayed on until bedtime.
Nearly sent me bonkers.
Might have been my Sister’s way of making sure I didn’t overstay my welcome!
Research amongst my 3 kids suggests TV goes on, stays on and then they all walk away. Two eldest use their iPod touch, which is never out of their hand from playing games to using Facetime.
The laptop is fired up and the game of choice is Sims 3 at this point they glance at the TV. While building whole cities on Sims 3, they have 5 to 6 conversations on MSM- the youngest listens to music CD’s and dances and plays with the eldest Nintendo who now says is ‘gay’.
TV might be high amongst this group but their attention span is that of a goldfish and a tiny goldfish at that.
The TV is on but they don’t watch it apart from Glee and Bondi Rescue- the ads when they do notice them bleat out their current favorite phrase at the moment – ‘that’s speddy’ which I haven’t a clue what it means but with their eyes rolling I don’t think it’s meant to be a compliment.
Upshot – ignore research.
Anon, the underlying principle behind ANY panel that does this sort of ongoing research is that everyone has an equal, or if not equal a known probability of being selected (of course they can refuse – that is their choice).
The TV ratings are “anchored” by the ABS Census and other relevant statistics. However, the ABS can’t supply everything so it is supplemented by another large rolling annual survey that delves specifically into TV usage – including things like how many TV sets, whether they have a PVR, whether they have Subscription TV etc etc. People from this survey are then also asked that if the sample in the furure requires a home in their area that matches their composition and make-up, would they be interested in coming on to the panel. That is, a “pool” of known households is also maintained.
The panel that reports TV ratings every day is then compared back to the “ideal panel” based on the ABS and the TV specific research. Then if there are shortages in the reporting panel – for example there may be a shortage of four-person homes with 3 TVs, a PVR and Foxtel in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs – then housholds in the “pool” that meet those criteria are re-contacted and asked whether they would like to be on the panel.
So in essence … it is luck of the draw and we all have an equal chance (around 1-in-1700) of being selected. No amount of arm-twisting, sweet talking, or knowing the right person will get you on to the panel!
Kevin, in the scenario you outlined, the panellists are asked to “log out” from the PeopleMeter if they leave the TV room or are away from the TV (compliance on this is higher than you would think!). But if they don’t log out that “viewing” would be detected as an inordinately long television viewing session without any change (part of the edit rules) and the data for that entire household is ignored so that it doesn’t corrupt the ratings for that day. If that househould keeps popping up on the ignore list then it is replaced with a ‘like-household’.