By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --The pandemic accelerated changes in how people use their televisions, further reducing the dominance in traditional live viewing of what networks are showing, a new study has found.
Nearly two-thirds of people said in June that they viewed free video on demand content on their televisions once a week, up from 46% in February 2020, according to Hub Entertainment Research.
Hub also found that 39% of people said they paid to watch a movie at least once a week, and 39% also said they paid to watch a TV show. In both cases, that doubled the percentage of people who said the same thing before the COVID-19 shutdown.
"People had a lot more time so they had a vacuum to fill," said Jon Giegengack, Hub principal and founder. "The people who didn't get laid off had more money to spend."
While these trends predated the pandemic, the time at home speeded things up, Giegengack said. Forty percent of the people who own smart TVs bought them since the initial COVID-19 shutdown, he said. Hub surveyed 3,000 U.S. consumers aged 14 to 74 who watch TV at least an hour a week.
The shift is also illustrated in the sharp declines of people watching live network television over the past few years.
Traditional television ratings by the Nielsen company illustrated two winners last week. Fox's broadcast of the "Field of Dreams" baseball game from a field built out of an Iowa cornfield was the third most-watched program all week.
HBO said Sunday's finale of its six-episode limited series, "The White Lotus," was seen by nearly 2 million people across all formats. The viewership was more than triple what it was for the series debut.
In an otherwise quiet TV week, ABC led with an average of 2.69 million viewers in primetime. NBC had 2.65 million, CBS had 2.4 million, Fox had 2.2 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million.
Fox News Channel led the cable networks, with an average of 2.2 million viewers in primetime. MSNBC had 1.29 million, HGTV had 1.14 million, TLC had 1.05 million and Hallmark had 829,000.
ABC's "World News Tonight" led the evening news ratings race, with an average of 7.8 million viewers last week. NBC's "Nightly News" was second with 6.5 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 4.7 million.
For the week of Aug. 9-15, the 20 most-watched programs, their networks and viewerships:
1. "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 7.14 million.
2. "60 Minutes," CBS, 6.51 million.
3. "Field of Dreams Game: N.Y. Yankees vs. Chicago White Sox," Fox, 5.85 million.
4. "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 5.67 million.
5. "The Bachelorette," ABC, 4.6 million.
6. "Celebrity Family Feud," ABC, 4.5 million.
7. "Big Brother" (Wednesday), CBS, 3.96 million.
8. "Big Brother" (Thursday), CBS, 3.86 million.
9. "Big Brother" (Sunday), CBS, 3.78 million.
10. "The $100,000 Pyramid," ABC, 3.68 million.
11. "America's Funniest Home Videos," ABC, 3.59 million.
12. ABC News Special: War in Afghanistan, ABC, 3.47 million.
13. "American Ninja Warrior," NBC, 3.45 million.
14. "NCIS," CBS, 3.41 million.
15. "Press Your Luck," ABC, 3.28 million.
16. "Field of Dreams Post-Game," Fox, 3.15 million.
17. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Monday), Fox News, 3.124 million.
18. "The Neighborhood," CBS, 3.118 million.
19. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Tuesday), Fox News, 3.1 million.
20. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Thursday), Fox News, 2.91 million.
California governor signs law to protect children from social media addiction
California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday.
California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform's algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children's access to social media, but they have faced challenges in court.
The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users' personal information in ways that could harm children. It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impacts of social media on the well-being of children.
"Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night," Newsom said in a statement. "With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits."
The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically in school. The legislation also makes platforms set children's accounts to private by default.
Opponents of the legislation say it could inadvertently prevent adults from accessing content if they cannot verify their... Read More