28
Nov
In mid-September, Viacom executives found what executives later called an “inexplicable” glitch in viewership for the company’s popular child-oriented cable network Nickelodeon: Nielsen posted a ratings decline ranging from 15% to 20%. “Children’s overall media use has actually increased but is split between TV, video games, computers, social networking, DVDs, music and other types of formats,” said T. Makana Chock, associate professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School. “They are also multitasking more frequently.”
Indeed, a January 2010 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation determined that viewership of regularly scheduled TV programming by children ages 8 to 18 had declined by 25 minutes a day—the time such usage had fallen since Kaiser first started studying those media habits in 1999. While the younger set continues to watch TV, more “is either prerecorded or watched on other platforms,” the report found.
