For Americans, watching TV is almost a full-time job

Viewers in the U.S. spend more than 33 hours per week watching video across the screens, according to the latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, just two hours less than the legally considered time for a full-time job.Even though channel-surfing would seem to be a pretty serious activity for Americans, it’s not all couch potato activity, however. According to the Nielsen blog, how people in the States are consuming content—traditional TV and otherwise—is changing. Consumers are beginning to seek out different entertainment options if it makes the most sense for them. "Demonstrating that consumers are increasingly making Internet connectivity a priority, 75.3% pay for broadband Internet (up from 70.9% last year); 90.4% pay for cable, telephone company-provided TV or satellite," reads the blog. "Homes with both paid TV and broadband increased 5.5% since last year." These homes averaged 122.6 minutes per day watching traditional television, and 11.2 minutes for streaming on average each day. The takeaway is that household capability for cutting the cord is on the rise, although it may not yet be happening in sizeable numbers. And indeed, though they represent less than 5% of TV households, homes with broadband Internet and free-to-air TV only grew a full 22.8% over last year. These households stream video twice as much as the general population and watch half as much traditional TV. "Whether they’re cord-cutters or former broadcast-only homes that upgraded to Internet service, these homes represent a very small but growing group of U.S. consumers," the company noted. Meanwhile it's clear that cable TV continues to suffer in the States at the hands of more traditional rivals. The number of homes subscribing to wired cable has decreased 4.1% in the past year at the same time that IPTV and satellite TV have seen increases of 21.1% and 2.1%, respectively.