Essay #2 (May 4) 1) Read all this information to have a better idea of TV in the US. How important is TV in our lives? Has it changed over the last years? Here you have some data about TV in the US (http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv030.htm): Today, the average American watches close to four hours of TV each day. Based on this, by age 65, the average U.S. citizen will have spent nearly 9, non-stop, 24 hour-a-day years glued to "the tube." The following provides even more insight into the power of television — and suggests some sobering things to think about. 98. 5 percent of U.S. households have at least one television set 90% of U.S. households have two or more TV sets 87% of U.S. households have at least one DVD or PVR player The average U.S. home has the TV on more than 51 hours a week. (Obviously, the TV is on many more hours a week than each family member spends watching it.) New trends? (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/business/media/young-people-arewatching-but-less-often-on-tv.html?pagewanted=all) But more and more young people are tuning in elsewhere. Americans ages 12 to 34 are spending less time in front of TV sets, even as those 35 and older are spending more, according to research that will be released on Thursday by Nielsen, a company that tracks media use. The divide along a demographic line reveals the effect of Internet videos, social networks, mobile phones and video games — in short, all the alternatives to the television set that are taking up growing slices of the American attention span. Young people are still watching the same shows, but they are streaming them on computers and phones to a greater degree than their parents or grandparents do. It has long been predicted that these new media would challenge traditional television viewing, but this is the first significant evidence to emerge in research data. If the trends hold, the long-term implications for the media industry are huge, possibly causing billions of dollars in annual advertising spending to shift away from old-fashioned TV.
The television industry has been expecting — and dreading the day — that TV viewing peaks, and then either plateaus or slowly declines in the face of encroaching Internet and phone use. According to data that Nielsen will release on Thursday, television viewing as a whole is steady, in part because older Americans — particularly those over the age of 65 — are watching more than ever before. Digital video recorders deserve some of the credit for the up tick, since they let people stockpile shows. But for three straight quarters, there have been declines in viewing among Americans under 35, even when DVR viewer ship is factored in, according to Nielsen data analyzed by The New York Times. Most popular TV shows in the US (http://www.tvguide.com/top-tv-shows)
2) What about Spain? What’s the role of TV in this country? What can you say about TV programmes, series, etc.? Do we watch lots of TV shows? What are our favourite ones? Has TV lost popularity against the Internet? Write down your reaction to this topic as if it was an article for the New York Times. You should include some reviews for some TV shows (Spanish or from any other country). You can also include data, statistics, images, and any other type of information to justify your ideas. (1000 words)
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