The average American watches 34 hours of television per week, nearly equivalent to a full time, 40 hour, work week. Of course it wasn’t always like that, in the 1950’s it was estimated that roughly 9 percent of American households had a television set. By the 1960’s that number had grown to 87 percent of households (Morrison, 2014). The distribution channel used by television at that time was “over the air” delivery of programming and advertising material. Meaning the content was delivered through the air via radio frequency signals that were then received and decoded using an antenna on the television set (Morrison, 2014). The over the air distribution channel had limitations related to the distance the signals could travel and it lacked …show more content…
This has allowed viewers to see what they want, when they want, and they are able to watch their desired content across multiple devices (Morrison, 2014). The capability of internet delivery as a distribution channel for television programming has been considered as the possible beginning of the end for television as we knew it. In 2011 98% of American homes had a television, but that number had fallen to 97% in 2012 and was the first decline ever for that statistic (Morrison, 2014). The changing channels of distribution for television programming have resulted in more and more people “cutting the cord”, that is getting rid of their cable and satellite TV , switching instead to using only online streaming services, such as Netflix (Jones, …show more content…
People are no longer interested in being required to sit in front of a television set to view their chosen programming. A recent study on consumer media consumption habits revealed that in 2016, 32% percent of consumers preferred to watch programming on their computer that number rose to 42% in 2017. In that same time-frame, those who desired to watch their programming on a television set declined from 52% in 2016 to 23% in 2017 (Drayton, 2017). Additionally, the number of people wishing to view programming content on their smartphone device has increased, from 10% in 2016 to 13% in 2017 (Drayton,