Games Continue to Steal TV Hours

Ziff Davis Media recently released its annual "Digital Gaming in America" report. The results, based on 1,500 randomly selected households, shows that 24% of game players watched less TV this year than last and expect to cut their TV viewing even more this year. The study also concluded that 76.2 million Americans play games, up from 67.5 million a year ago. Another interesting tidbit is that HDTV viewership increased to 18% from 7% a year ago. So what does this all mean? Sure, games are taking away TV time, but is that due to the fact that games are so good or that TV is so bad? My assertion is that TV is so piss poor these days that it's not surprising people are migrating to other forms of entertainment, including reading, which is also up. Add to the mix the fact that the internet is getting more and more media heavy, not to mention useful, and you can see why TV viewership is down.