The great gap incollege TV watching Study:
Half of their vieiwing is untracked
By Samantha Melamed Aug 3, 2006
In their pursuit of the elusive young consumers, one of the gaps for advertisers has always been college kids and their use of media, in large part because their TV viewing was not tracked by Nielsen.
Somewhere, in dorm rooms or off-campus apartments or bars, a lot of college kids were watching TV. Just how many and how much they were watching was not known.
It turns out to be a sizable amount.
More than one-fifth of 18-34s are college students, and they do more than half of their TV watching outside of their parents' home. When that is included in 18-34 measures, the audience rises 15 percent.
The study, by Total-TV Audience Monitor, found that 54 percent of college student viewing takes place in venues not measured by Nielsen--those dorm rooms, off-campus apartments and bars--and that a third of all adults 18-34 who watch television in such venues in an average week watch no television at home.
Total-TV Audience Monitor conducted its research using a panel of 1,017 two- and four-year college students and graduate students. The panel tracked their viewing in diaries over the month of October 2005.
That sample group represents a significant population of young people: 22 percent of 18-34s are college students, or some 16.9 million Americans. And of that number, 74 percent live away from home during the school year, according to T-TAM.
"It's surprising how large the college student population actually is," says Lynnae Psaras, vice president at T-TAM. "I've always wondered how networks could talk about their 18-34-year-old audience and leave out so many viewers who are away at school."
In fact, T-TAM's report comes as Nielsen Media Research is preparing to include students' out of home viewing in ratings. According to a Nielsen spokesperson, a pilot study of college students' viewing confirms T-TAM's 15 percent out of home findings. But details as to the size and composition of Nielsen's upcoming college panel are uncertain as yet. Says the spokesperson: "The measurement that we're going to do is an extension of our in-home ratings, so if a panel household has a student in college, then we will include them."
Here are some other findings of the T-TAM study:
Male and female students watch at significantly different hours. Men are most likely to watch on weekends from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., while women are most likely to be watching any day from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
As to where they're watching, 46 percent of viewing takes place in permanent homes, 37 percent watch in off-campus housing, 16 percent watch at on-campus locations including dorms, and just 1 percent of TV viewing takes place in bars or restaurants.
Viewing also varies by place of residence. Students living on campus watch three hours less per week than those living off campus, according to the study. And on average, those who live on campus do only 1.32 hours, or 9 percent of their weekly viewing, in-home, while the rest of their viewing for now goes uncounted.
While students who live away from home watch less television than their counterparts, 81 percent have TV sets in their rooms, 68 percent have cable, 26 percent have digital cable and 9 percent have satellite television. Some 13 percent have digital video recorders.
The study also found that in the average 15-minute viewing span, the college audience was split between broadcast (48 percent) and ad-supported cable (46 percent) viewing. Pay cable, video on demand, public television and other content account for the other 6 percent.
Network series constitute 27 percent of students' viewing and were the top genre overall. Sports and sports-related programming was No. 2 at 18 percent overall but No. 1 for men. Syndicated programs was No. 3 at 13 percent, followed by movies (10 percent) and talk shows (9 percent).
Samantha Melamed is a staff writer for Media Life.
