America Turned Off? Internet Use Catches Up To TV

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — It looks like this Internet thing is catching on.

For the first time ever, researchers say the average American is spending as much time online as he or she does watching traditional television — an average of 13 hours every week, according to a new survey of about 30,000 U.S. consumers.

Forrester Research says consumer data collected since 2007 shows the average amount of time spent online is up 121 percent, while the traditional TV audience has only grown about 5 percent in the same period.

Video sites such as Hulu and Metacafe offering broadcast network content are surging in popularity, reinforcing the survey's findings that more viewers are turning off their sets and logging online to catch their favorite shows.

Adults under 30 have traditionally been the heaviest users of online content, but the new survey suggests that more people in older age groups between 32-44 are splitting their time between TV and the Internet. Even the more senior audiences aged 66 and older are spending at least eight hours online per week.

But that surge in popularity comes at a heavy price for radio: their audience has been cut by 15 percent as stations struggle to migrate their listeners to online platforms.

Print readership for both newspapers and magazines are also down as much as 26 percent, leaving many periodicals scrambling for funding or simply closing their operations, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which delivered its final edition in 2009 after 146 years in print.

So what's the biggest factor behind the TV exodus? Expanded access, for one: at least 2 million new households will go online for the first time by the end of 2010, a rate that points to 82 percent of families with Internet access by 2015.

The report also forecasts up to 5.5 million households will have broadband access in 2010, allowing a whole new segment of the population to shop (a number that has tripled in just three years), socialize (up 17 percent from 2007) and whatever else Americans make time to do online.

Which lately, it seems, is just about everything.

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