On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Wesley McGee <[email protected]> wrote: > http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/762/fading-glory-television-telephone-luxury-necessity > > The trend has reversed, as fewer people now regard the television (and the > landline telephone) as a necessity, This is curious as there is not yet a > complete substitute for the TV (as there is for the wired phone), though > there are many partial substitutes new and old for the television. (Internet > for news and information, less so for entertainment. Direct purchasing or > on-demand streaming of entertainment to computers and mobile devices. Cinema > in movie theatres. Etc. . .) > >> Just 42% of Americans say they consider the television set to be a >> necessity, according to a new nationwide survey from the Pew Research >> Center's Social & Demographic Trends project. Last year, this figure was >> 52%. In 2006, it was 64%.
TechCrunch noticed that the survey treated TVs and flat screen TVs separately so the drop is much less than if you asked for how many people couldn't live without either one. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/americans-need-tv/ Excerpt: This is a stunning drop in a single year, and surely it shows that more people have their faces glued to their computer screens and cell phones, which is taking away from how they feel about their TVs. Except that is not what the data shows at all. The survey breaks out TV sets and flat screen TVs. Guess how many people consider a flat screen TV essential? It is 10 percent, which when you combine it with the regular TV sets, brings you back to 52 percent. Only 5 percent of people said that they absolutely need a flat screen TV last year. So the total combined need for TVs still went down a bit (by 5 percent), but it is not quite as dramatic as the headline would lead you to believe. That’s about the same difference as the amount of people who no longer say the need a landline phone, which dropped 6 points last year to 62 percent. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
