Demographics Of Live TV Viewers, April 2014 [CHART]

A couple of new studies suggest that despite the apparent rise in over-the-top video consumption, particularly among youth, the vast majority of Americans usually watch TV programming the old-fashioned way: live on TV. According to survey results from Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange (OTX), that’s the typical viewing method for 81% of Americans; a separate study from BroadStream Solutions similarly finds that roughly 8 in 10 American adults are watching live TV. Predictably, though, live TV viewing skews towards an older audience.

As the Ipsos survey results indicate, 89% of American adults aged 50-64 usually watch TV programming live on TV, a figure which drops to 82% among 35-49-year-olds and 72% among the 18-34 crowd. That aligns with study findings from Nielsen, which show a strong skew towards older age groups for traditional TV viewing comparison to TV content viewed on computers and smartphones. Other data from Nielsen also shows that older age groups watch significantly more traditional TV than their younger counterparts, although the recent drop-off among youth hasn’t been as drastic as sometimes implied. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.