I’ve just been listening to a segment on TV and TVOD on the BBC’s Media Show and it has reminded me just how far outside the mainstream my media consumption practices are. The average British household apparently ‘watches’ four hours of TV a day – a record high figure. This probably includes ambient sporadically viewed ‘TV on in the corner’ but still how on earth do they find the time? I probably watch an average of an hour of TV a week. X Factor has been an extraordinary success for ITV – I have never watched it (and probably haven’t watched ITV at all in a year). The channel I view programmes from most is probably (you guessed it) BBC4. Even with the proliferation of DVRs, TVoD etc, people still watch 88% of their television ‘live’. I watch or listen to almost nothing in that way any more. By far the bulk of my audiovisual media consumption comes in (audio) podcast form – about 1.5 hours a day – because I can do it while doing other things eg cycling to and from work.
It’s really odd to realise just how far outside of the media consumption mainstream I am (and it’s hard for me to imagine myself into the heads of more typical media consumers).
