September 27, 2005

Now, here’s a blogger’s dilemma:  Can a Chaser blog himself?  As wiser heads figure out a solution, we thought we would call your attention to our Poynter Online centerpiece about media consumption. Here’s the lede:



Americans are hungry media consumers, spending almost two-thirds of our busy days interacting with one medium or another. We spend more time with media than eating, sleeping or any other activity.


We are also media multi-taskers, spending one-third of that time with multiple media, such as using the Web and watching television at the same time, or using an iPod and reading e-mail.


Those are two of the major conclusions of the latest report from Ball State University’s Middletown Media Studies project, which tracked the media usage habits of more than 350 people.


And here’s some statistics that matter:



Here are the overall amounts of media minutes spent per user per day according to the 5,000 hours of observations recorded by the project researchers:



  • Television:  240.9 minutes
  • Any computer use: 135.8 minutes
  • All Internet: 93.4 minutes
  • Radio: 80.0 minutes
  • Music [includes MP3 players]: 65.1 minutes
  • Phone, includes cell: 42.2 minutes
  • All print media: 32.8 minutes
  • All video [VCR and DVD]: 32.6 minutes
  • Newspapers: 12.2 minutes
  • Game console: 11.6 minutes

You can read the full article here.  The complete reports from Ball State University will be available here. You can read the news release here.


Understanding how consumers use media is vital, regardless of the medium involved.  So important that Poynter will be hosting a conference on the subject next March.  You can check that out a link to the seminar page with a click here.

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Howard has been in journalism for 40 years. His resume includes positions with the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and…
Howard Finberg

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