Quarantine Life: Staying at Home Can Drive Up TV Viewing 60% or More, Nielsen Says
By Todd Spangler
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – To state the obvious: TV viewing and streaming video will get a big bump with the coronavirus pandemic leaving millions of Americans housebound.
But how big a jump are we talking about related to the current COVID-19 crisis? When consumers stay at home amid broadly disruptive events, their media consumption rises nearly 60% — and even more in some cases, according to a Nielsen data analysis.
Consumers who stay indoors during major crises gravitate toward watching feature films, news and general format programming, per the research firm. also found an average 61% increase in streaming video via the TV.
Nielsen’s analysis is based on data total TV usage data during two recent events: Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a 2016 blizzard in the Northeastern U.S. During a four-week period in August 2017, total TV viewing in Houston rose 56% compared with the preceding period, according to the analysis. Similarly, over the weekend of Jan 23, 2016, total usage of television in the New York was 45% higher than the weekend prior.
With an increase in TV viewing, there’s a potential opportunity for advertisers to reach a bigger captive audience with brand messages. On the other hand, Nielsen noted, consumers “may not risk leaving their homes to spend” and so may not be as receptive to call-to-action advertising.
Traditional TV viewing has been dropping, as streaming video on TVs via services like Netflix has boomed . In the third quarter of 2019, Americans’ average time per day viewing live and time-shifted TV among adults 18+ dropped by 7%, to 3 hours and 56 minutes, Nielsen says. Time spent watching content on connected-TV devices increased 17% over the same time period, to 55 minutes daily. About 91% of all U.S. adults subscribe to a streaming video service (and 96% of respondents 18-34 do), a Nielsen survey found. Overall, 30% of U.S. consumers subscribe to three or more video streaming services.
Meanwhile, TV viewing among employees who work remotely during a typical Monday-Friday work schedule watch over 3 hours more each week compared with in-office workers, per Nielsen (25 hours and 2 minutes for remote workers vs. 21 hours and 56 minutes for non-remote workers).
