Report: The Economy’s Down, And TV Viewership Is Trending Up

With family vacation budgets sliced and even the weekend trip to the movies suddenly seeming like a luxury, it’s perhaps no surprise that in 2010, Americans watched more TV.

According to viewership figures reported today by The New York Times, the average American watched 34 hours of television a week in 2010–the most ever.

The fact that many of those hours were episodes of the Jersey Shore and Two And A Half Men will have to go without comment at this point in history. But beyond the obvious there were many interesting notes in the year-end data.

As the Times points out, the otherwise low-buzz Investigation Discovery (Or, “ID”) channel turned in “eye-popping growth” with a slate of nonfiction shows that boosted viewership 64 percent versus the previous year.

Also setting records was Univision, which now rivals ABC, CBS, NBC and CBS as America’s most-watched network:

For the year it averaged a 1.5 rating among 18- to 49-year-olds and 3.7 million total viewers. On an otherwise quiet Monday last week, the finale of one of its telenovelas, “Soy Tu Dueña,” or “I’m Your Owner,” averaged four million viewers in that demographic, beating all the English-language networks for the night.

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