According to data from 2018-2019, there are nearly 120 million TV households in the United States. And, in 2018, Americans are watching more than 7 hours and 50 minutes of television per household per day. And those television sets are turned on: A lot! Nielsen reports that the average person spends an average of more than 34 hours a week watching television. According to a recent Nielsen report, it is almost impossible to find a household that does not watch television. Nielsen found that fully 99% of U.S. Households have at least one television set in the home, and 55% of the homes have three or more television sets.

According the 2018 Comscore TV Essentials® data research report,the audience for the three major cable news channels (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC) increased in 2018. The average combined audience (defined as the average number of TVs tuned to a program throughout a time period) for the prime news time slot (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) of these three networks increased 8%, to about 1.25 million. The average audience for the daytime news time slot (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) increased by 5%. Total revenue across the three cable news channels increased by 4% in 2018 to a total of $5.3 billion, according to estimates from Kagan, a media research group. This includes increases in both main revenue sources: advertising and license fees.

As for the broadcast television network evening newscasts, the average audience for the evening newscasts for ABC, CBS and NBC increased in 2018, with 5.3 million viewers tuning in on average, compared with 5.2 million in 2017, according to 2018 Comscore TV Essentials® data. As for the network morning news shows, average audience for morning news programs from ABC, CBS and NBC remained relatively the same from 2017 to 2018 at about 3.2 million viewers. The three networks’ advertiser expenditures for the morning news programs saw a slight increase in 2018, increasing 3% to $1.13 billion.

The viewership audience of PBS NewsHour also remained consistent from 2017 to 2018, with a total of 1.1 million viewers.

Clearly, anyone who is intent on reaching the broadest possible audience with their message has good reason to consider television as a key ingredient in their communications mix.