Zero TV Households

The internet has changed the way people entertain themselves at home. According to Nielsen, the ratings people, the number of households in the US that no longer watches traditional TV has increased to 5 million from 3 million in 2007. Those families have found that computers, smartphones and tablets connected to the internet work just fine as TV replacements.

That’s still a very small slice of the market, Nielsen acknowledges. Today, 95 percent of U.S. viewers still watch so-called “traditional TV” in their living rooms. And even among the cord-cutting group, the TV itself isn’t obsolete. It’s a platform used for console gaming, watching DVDs and surfing the Internet. More than 75 percent of the cord-cutting group still has at least one TV set, Nielsen found.

While the “Zero TV” household could also refer to those who simply don’t watch video content at all, most (67 percent) still do watch video content. Thirty-seven percent do so on a computer, 16 percent via the Internet, 8 percent on smartphones and 6 percent on tablets.