5 Current Trends Shaping the Television Industry

Although TV ownership dropped last year for the first time since 1992, traditional TV viewership rose 22 minutes — the length of a sitcom — per month. Now the average viewer consumes 159 hours of TV per month. 

And there’s also a new media platform — your Internet browser — that increasingly competes for your attention. According to Forrester, people spend as much time on the Internet as they do watching television — and sometimes they watch TV on the Internet on sites like Netflix and Hulu. So how does digital’s infiltration of the mainstream affect consumer trends when it comes to television?

Market research firm Mintel recently published a report on the U.S. television industry — we checked out the data and found some other stats to shed some light on what’s happening in the world of television.

Thanks to Hulu and Netflix, people don’t necessarily need television sets in order to consume media. But while the recession prompted consumers to cut back on dining out and other frivolities, they did continue to spend on home entertainment, which has prompted many TV manufacturers invest in new, Internet-enabled models. So even while traditional television is being challenged by the rise of Internet video streaming, manufacturers are embracing new consumer behaviors.

To read more from this article, please click here.