I got rid of my television at the ripe old age of 22. I don't miss it; if I want my Simpsons fix, I go to my parents' house.

News, interesting videos, learning new stuff? It's called the Internet.

Check out TV-TurnOff-Week at Adbusters.com for some tips to reduce your television addiction. The TV-B-Gone gadget is also helpful when you're trying to have a conversation at a cafe that's blaring a tv no one's watching.

Since I canned my tv (I do still watch DVDs though), I have drastically cut down on my expenses; less exposure to marketing campaigns directly equals less "stuff" purchased. That's good for my wallet AND the environment!

I got rid of my television at the ripe old age of 22. I don't miss it; if I want my Simpsons fix, I go to my parents' house.

News, interesting videos, learning new stuff? It's called the Internet.

Check out TV-TurnOff-Week at Adbusters.com for some tips to reduce your television addiction. The TV-B-Gone gadget is also helpful when you're trying to have a conversation at a cafe that's blaring a tv no one's watching.

Since I canned my tv (I do still watch DVDs though), I have drastically cut down on my expenses; less exposure to marketing campaigns directly equals less "stuff" purchased. That's good for my wallet AND the environment!

I don't get it. Theres nothing good on american TV. what are they even watching so much?

How is it physically possible to watch 8 hours a day?? Are there a few hardcore in the USA who do all the watching, while everyone else gets on with their lives? Or are the TV channels lying to their advertisers??

Turning on TV = Turning of your brain

Oops, I meant "Turning OFF your brain".

...maybe I've been watching too much TV lately.

It would be interesting to overlay a country by country increase in obesity among adults and children.

"Theres nothing good on american TV."

I wouldn't say that. Especially now that Dr. Who and Torchwood are both on hiatus.

To be honest, I'd ditch my cable in a heartbeat if they didn't charge me extra to get cable broadband without cable TV. Everything I want, even all my favorite TV shows, are available (legally) on the Internet. And without commercials!

I don't see how anyone can watch 8 hours of TV a day. Do they have other people cook and clean for them?

Something is fishy with this data. If the average person gets home from work at 6pm, turns the TV on, and watches TV continuously without taking a break to prepare food, run an errand, etc, he or she would stop watching at 2am every single day all year long. If he or she stopped at midnight during the workweek, he or she would have to watch from 10am to midnight on Sat and Sun to make up the time.

Something is fishy with this data. If the average person gets home from work at 6pm, turns the TV on, and watches TV continuously without taking a break to prepare food, run an errand, etc, he or she would stop watching at 2am every single day all year long. If he or she stopped at midnight during the workweek, he or she would have to watch from 10am to midnight on Sat and Sun to make up the time.

yeah, I call BS on this as well. if you have a job, it's just not physically possible to watch tv for 8 hours a day... unless that IS your job?

That was the viewing for the whole household. It still doesn't seem right to me that the US would be almost double everyone else. I watch 2-3 hours of History/Discovery shows. My daughter watches Sprout for about an hour so it might be on 3-4 hours a day.

I have the full spectrum of digital cable, plus HBO. About 150 channels. And I can sometimes find literally NOTHING to watch. I will scroll through the entire interactive schedule and there's NOTHING. The Science Channel runs the same 20 documentaries over and over...the cable news is nothing but shoutfests...

This is definitely hours per day that the TV is on. I know when I was a kid, we would turn on the TV as soon as we got home from school, and it stayed on until my parents went to sleep, even if nobody was watching it. The only time in between that it was off was during dinner. We also had a TV for me and my brother to play video games on, which was probably on for a few hours a day.

Both my parents worked, but for those families with a stay-at-home parent, I could imagine a TV being on for up to 14 hours a day.

For households with multiple TVs, I assume they added the time together (4 hours of watching 2 TVs = 8 hours of TV), which would explain why the American numbers are so much higher.

So yeah, I'd say these numbers are totally believable.

You know, I gave up the majority of my tv watching when I moved into a dormitory last fall. I couldn't afford a tv, and even if I could, I definitely couldn't afford cable. I did watch DVDs and a couple of shows on the net (legally) but it was all from my computer and T-1 hookup.

Over the summer, I am getting my tv fix from my folks' HD cable hookup, but its still not on for more than 3-4 hours a day (in the evening), except on Sundays...my one day off.

It appears nobody in the comments section seems to get the point:

average HOUSEHOLD hours... as in between everyone in a household, all of them, collectively, watch 8 hours, on average...

So, for example, a 4 person household, each person watches 2 hours per day. And don't forget about the stay at home parents, or the weekends where people watch more than during the week, or the kids who get home at 3...

It's not fishy. Not everyone in America works all day.