Teens are watching more TV, not less, report says

Relax, TV programmers. The teen viewer isn't going anywhere. The perception of today's teenagers is that of antsy kids bouncing back and forth between their computer screens and cellphones as they update their Facebook statuses and look at videos on Hulu and YouTube while texting their friends. The reality is that for all the time teens spend staring at small screens, it's still the television screen that gets most of their attention. "There is a popularized notion of the typical teenager constantly digitally connected.... In fact, teens consume the vast, vast majority of their video content via traditional television," according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. senior analyst Todd Juenger in a new report titled "Why the Internet Won't Kill TV." Juenger, who follows traditional media companies including CBS and Time Warner, scrutinized data from Nielsen to show that "consumption of television by teens has stubbornly continued to grow, even as new devices have permeated their lives."