It’s easy to paint the American media consumer with a broad brush. We know they enjoy hours of video content each day but all the while more entertainment choices are seeping in over the top, under the bottom and from either side: 16% of U.S. households now have a smart TV, 38% have access to Netflix, 51% have a tablet and 78% own a smartphone.
Yet when you look deeper, it becomes apparent that not all markets are the same. The global trends of technology penetration and viewer fragmentation do not impact all markets uniformly. In other words, think globally but act locally.
How We Watch
Pittsburgh has the highest amount of live TV viewing per day at more than five hours. Cleveland and Atlanta are the leaders in time-shifted viewing at an hour per day. Baltimore and Minneapolis spend the most time with over-the-top streaming at 14 minutes per day (on average).
Elsewhere, subscription video-on-demand penetration continues to climb. There are now five markets where more than half of the homes have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus. Many of these same markets are leading in mobile video usage as well.
