I'm interested in whether there are any statistics available on how
often Americans change television channels in the course of an hour, a
day, a week, a month,
a year and a lifetime.  I would like data that would give me
per-capita averages of channel changes for these time scales for a
general population, a city, a state or a region for example.  I looked
online but couldn't find any information specifically targetting this
question.   I would very much
appreciate assistance in this matter- Bobby

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Clarification of Question by bobbyrefkin-ga on 25 Apr 2006 11:23 PDT

I don't need information about all the different times,  just
information about averages from which I could extrapolate averages for
the time scales described.  Thanks.

<How many times an American changes channels in a lifetime.

There have been a number of studies to find out how many times people
change channels.

This report gives the results of a number of studies:

Selnow, 1989
Using a questionnaire it was found that 17.9% switched channels more
than once every two minutes, 35.8% changed one to three times every
six and a half minutes 46.3%changed one time every 20 minutes.

Heeter & Greenberg, 1985b 
3.4 channel changes per hour during regularly-watched shows.  
4.6 channel changes per hour during shows watched on a non-regular basis.

Ferguson,1991a
4.9 channel changes per hour.  

Walker & Bellamy, 1989
3.4 changes per hour

Wenner & Dennehy,1993
3.2 changes per hour.

Ferguson 1991a
4.9 changes per hour

Eastman & Newton 1993
1.73 changes per hour

Cornwell, et al. 1993 
13.6 changes per hour

Ainslie 
2.5 changes per hour

Ferguson 1994
36.6 changes per hour.

Source: "57 Channels and Nothin' On"1:Electronic Monitoring of
Television Remote Control Device Usage in the Home Environment

http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9603a&L=aejmc&T=0&O=A&P=765>


The average american watches television for 8 hours and 11 minutes per day.
Source: Nielsen Media Research.
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:i8Ke_lPMYNgJ:www.nielsenmedia.com/newsreleases/2005/AvgHoursMinutes92905.pdf+average+american+watches+hours+television+2005&hl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=1

Average life expectancy in the U.S. is 75 years. Source: U.S. Centers
for disease control.
http://www.eagle-min.com/faq/faq85.htm

Number of channel changes in a lifetime ? range from 388,000 to over 8
million ? depending on which study results are used.
The number of changes in a lifetime can be calculated by mutiplying:
The number of changes in an hour,
The number of hous watched,
The number of days in a year,
The average life expectancy.

1.73 x 8.183 x 365 x 75 = 387,536.64
36.6 x 8.183 x 365 x 75 = 8,198,751.7  

For greater accuracy you may want to deduct a few years for infancy.>


<Search strategy:>

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<average american watches hours television 2005>
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<Hope this helps.>

I'd hate to count.  Let's see:  during a five minute ad break, I might
click through the 20 channels on my satellite only connection, back to
one for a couple of minutes, back and forth to the original program to
see that ads are still running, and then back to the program; and then
do this again half an hour later (Germany has long breaks at that
interval).

I wonder if there is a recommendation for the number of clicks a
remote control should survive.

Are you for real?