Nielsen: Americans still love their TV, embracing DVRs

Americans watched an all-time high of 151 hours of TV per month last quarter, according to a new Nielsen study. Our TV habits are on the rise across the "three screens"—TV, Internet, and mobile devices—but the most growth is coming from DVRs, Internet video, and mobile phones. In the fourth quarter of 2008, 285 million Americans watched TV in their living rooms each month, which was up 1.1 percent from the previous quarter. Internet video users were up just 2.3 percent in the same period to 123 million per month, though, while DVRs (8.5 percent) and mobile phones (8.4 percent) took the lion's share of user growth, respectively rising to 74 million and 11 million users per month. Unsurprisingly, Nielsen's study found that the majority of DVR usage comes from a slightly older audience in the 25-64 year-old range, while 12-17 year-olds are watching the most video on mobile phones. Internet video is most popular among 25-54 year-olds. Growth is quite different, however, in terms of the amount of time that users watch video on each of these devices.