If you follow the link, it says Americans spend that amount of time daily with "major media", and no mention of news only. So that would presumably include reading/watching fiction, listening to music etc.?
> included are digital (online on desktop and laptop computers, mobile nonvoice and other connected devices), TV, radio, print (offline reading only), newspapers, magazines, radio, and television
Pretty big blunder in an article about media trustworthiness if you ask me.
This article is a freelance health/wellness writer dumping a spec pitch that didn’t sell on Substack to try to recoup a little of the invested work. The article was written toward an expected outcome starting from a Twitter poll, which means by the end of the lede it’s basically worthless because it exists only to confirm the author’s presupposition. That’s the polar opposite of journalism, despite what some folks would have you believe, and it’s why every editor she called presumably passed on this. Blunders throughout should surprise you next to zero because it’s basically a writer with Word open, a point to make (noticeably from a bad personal experience), and no support to keep it on track. And this is the kind of gun you want to make sure you’re aiming well. She isn’t.
Seriously, leading off with a Brandeis quote comes across as so horrifically pretentious it hurts. That the next graf is about a crisp November day almost made me close the tab immediately, and I’ve read some really bad work. The TL;DR being that long and then the article starting like that is a big, neon sign upon which is written “I badly need an editor.” And this is part 1! The horror!
Another blunder: the duplicated scripts are because lazy local producers take fully-produced packages off their network sources to fill time. I know because I’ve done it. If I’m three minutes light in my B block, I’m looking at the network’s stuff or CNN or whatever to get what I can. Something on trade relations? Cool. Throw it in! It’s already done! (Sinclair must-runs use the same mechanism and are just pushed on producers.) It’s not a local news producer watching a competitor’s air and writing it down word for word, as she seems to think it is with her “hence” behind that YouTube embed. An interesting oddity of news, but not the malevolent machine she’s implying.
(Yes, I ended up reading the whole thing. It’s an interest area; I was a local news director in TV and an assignment editor before my start in tech. The author understands next to nothing about the incentives nor economics of particularly newsgathering. I’d rebut it but I’d run out of room here. Why it’s on HN is beyond me, since not even Good Housekeeping would pick this drivel up. She’s onto something of course, and it’s a subject that deserves better study than this.)
This factoid actually just statistical error. The average person watches the news 0 hours a day. Tivo Georg, who interns on The Daily Show & watches over 10,000 hours of cable news each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted
I know people who spend all their working life with some podcast going over the topics of the day ad nauseum in their airpods. Then they get in the car and the podcast is still playing. Still playing while at the gym. Still playing cooking dinner. I know a few people who have to hear podcasts playing on their phone to be able to sleep now.
If its about current events usually its "lets take something that can be succinctly digested in three paragraphs from reuters and stretch it into 45 monetized minutes". I find podcasts are a lot of noise and not a lost of signal for the most part. It makes sense given the incentive structures.
If you follow throw to the link, it's more correct to say it says "Americans spend an average of 12 and half hours consuming media"
> In 2019, the average daily time spent with major media including television, newspapers, magazines, radio, and digital formats of each amounted to 750 minutes (12 hours and 30 minutes)
It's rather a bit inclusive that leads to a shock number.
Most Americans consume media most of the time, yes. I know people who haven't read a book since high school, but can tell you everything about either sports or celebrities, and often both. Indexical knowledge of sports and/or what celebrities have been up to for decades. This is what Americans do.
This is beyond the time they spend watching TV and movies. I would say for 90% of the people I know, this number is accurate. If you point it out, it's as if you're telling someone they need to lose weight. It's just not allowed by anyone besides Grandma or Grandpa anymore.
>This just doesn't make sense. The average American spends the majority of waking hours consuming news?
Oh for sure that's true. Politics/news that shouldn't be interesting to anyone, yet is extremely important to follow. It's practically life/death reality here. You're right though, it doesn't make sense. You get a single vote every couple years at most and can do nothing otherwise. So why care so much, it doesn't make sense?
"And you know what we have to do. This is a fuckin’ election year. We gotta be serious. Every able-bodied African-American must register for a legal firearm. That’s the only way they’ll change the law.”
“I’m clear that there’s no peaceful way to disarm America’s whites.”
“There’s only one thing that’s going to save this country from itself. Same thing that always saves this country from itself, and that is African Americans.”
Feels like a typo of "per week", not per day to me. An average of two hours a day feels high too but seems reasonable given the omnipresence of news content
I'm in political communications and am, in modern parlance, far Too Online. I definitely spend over 12 hours a day, and I'm one of the less engaged people in politics/civics fields that I've seen (depending on available time, of course).
Given people like us and the group of people that seems just plain ADDICTED to outrage bait/who hang out all day on Twitter, I think we might be skewing that number pretty drastically.
Either that or their definition of 'news' is wider than we'd expect and would include things like celebrity news. If we include keeping up with musicians/actors/Youtubers/etc. I wouldn't be shocked if that bumped up the numbers a lot.
Depends on what one classifies as 'news'? Is reading an article about how "Six companies control 90% of what you read, watch, and hear" news?
HN and Reddit links out to other sites (BBC, Ars Technica, Science Direct, etc): is being on HN and Reddit classified as dealing with news, entertainment, other?
How many Twitter threads are about an article on CNN, Fox News, ESPN, etc? Is the ensuing discussion related to 'news' or something else?
The source is about media in general, not news. This is about in line with what Nielsen reports. Keep in mind, this includes passive consumption like keeping the TV on for background noise.
yeah i work at a job when i can listen to audio books while i work on head phones i turn them on while getting ready for work listen through my whole shift and commute home so i can easily pull down 10 hours a day right there. I get home and the kids have the tv with there shows on there is a couple more hours even though i am not "watching" it its on near me. then i put on a old sitcom or star trek episode before i fall asleep so lets say another hour there. so i would pull down 13 hours of media consumption even if mine mostly falls outside of the normal type consumed.
I dont think most people can work all day while consuming media like i do though, so i suspect there is some populations segment with non normal media consumption habbits that has a outsized representation here most likely retirees that leave the tv on all day.
This just doesn't make sense. The average American spends the majority of waking hours consuming news?