Half Of Americans Watch Online Video: Nielsen

Internet video streaming is officially mainstream -- with 48% of U.S. consumers now watching some video online -- but TV remains the great American pastime, according to Nielsen's quarterly report on media consumption. Monthly time spent watching traditional TV in the second quarter of 2011 climbed 1.9%, to 146 hours and 20 minutes, a year-over-year increase of 2 hours and 43 minutes of monthly viewing, according to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report for Q2 2011. By contrast, time spent watching video on the Internet was 4 hours and 26 minutes per month on average, up 15% from a year ago -- just 3% of the time parked in front of the TV. And Americans spend more than four times watching time-shifted TV -- on DVRs and video-on-demand -- than watching online video, according to the Nielsen study.