Burning Question: Television Takeover?
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to hear that Neilsen has recently calculated that there are more television sets in America than humans. So with the average American home now having 2.86 TVs (dare you to get a good signal on that .86% of a television set) we wanted to know where your household stands.
Do TVs outnumber family members in your home? Or does flesh-and-blood still rule over wires-and-plasma ’round your parts? Don’t worry, we won’t judge either way- we’re just curious if our readers reflect these recent Neilsen findings. While we’ve only got one TV set in our house at the moment, we may have to invest in a second one someday to accomodate Burger’s viewing habits…
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2 TVs in use, one is in storage from my college days (I would call that a .86 tv)…however, we have two adults and two kids in the house. So more people that TVs ;)
We have 1 tv and 4 people. No plans on getting an additional tv anytime soon, though we may replace the one we have in the next year or two.
We, unfortunately, have a television in the bedroom as well as one in the den, so that is a 1:1 TV to human ratio. But don’t get me started on computers… those definitely outnumber us, for some bizarre reason.
Love your blog! But we are evenly matched between TVs and people in our household. Two people, two tvs. That way if he is racking up major kills on his PS3 I have somewhere to go and watch HGTV. :)
My husband and I both had TVs in our homes before me moved in together and he recently brought home a 46″ big screen to “surprise” me. :)
In our house, people = 7; TVs = 1.
Our family of four does not own a TV.
my fiance and i moved in together and i had one tv and he had three. yes three. we got rid of my older tv and kept his three. So if you dont include the pup and kitty then we have three tvs to two humans!
Four people in our home, two TVs. Although the one we have in our master may be getting the boot soon.
My husband and I have just the one (pretty old) TV in our living room. He’s an avid reader so there aren’t many times when we want to watch different shows. When he’s not interested in (for instance) one of my favorite HGTV shows, he just picks up a book and heads for a comfy chair.
since it’s just me and the hubby – we’ve been fine with only one tv in our house… i’m not sure if that will change once we have babies – but i hope not! i hope that we’ll encourage the whole “let’s NOT watch tv” when we have children. i certainly feel like getting rid of cable will help with that ;)
Technically, we have three. But, only two are hooked up to DirectTV. The other one just hangs out in the basement.
We have 3 people living in our house and only 2 TVs. But, we also have 6 computers (!), so what does that say?
Hey John,
There is only one TV in our household! Proud of it, too. We are the type that would rather be doing than watching but we also like to spend an hour or so every week to just veg and watch a favorite show now and then. If the wife and I can’t agree on the show then we’d rather not watch it anyway so there is no need to have two sets.
Travis
Not true in our house! We have one TV in our living room and an old 13 inch tv in our guest bedroom- that’s it! It’s just my wife and I in our city rowhouse and we didn’t find the need to have a tv in each room. For those very rare occassions that we MUST watch different things, one of us will just head up to the guest room for a bit. We both agree, too, that our bedroom should not have a tv, so just the two in the house works just fine.
I’m not sure why people need so many TVs. We are a family of four (plus one more on the way) and have two TVs. One barely gets used. When we watch TV it’s usually as a family. Love your blog!
4 people – 2 adults 2 kids – 3 TV’s.
One in the living room, one fuzzy one in the basement & one in the upstairs guest room (where the boys are allowed to watch Friday Night Smackdown…)
None in our bedroom, which is the best thing we could have ever done for our marriage. :)
Just one TV in my house and we only use it to watch movies occasionlly!
In my house I only have one television for just me but growing up I remember we had 7 tv’s for 4 people. I think my parents were worried about missing Pee Wee Herman(just kidding).
2 humans, 1 TV at our house
Two TVs and two people in my house. But the second TV is only there because my husband had it when we moved in together, and it only gets used when one of us is sick enough to be confined to bed rest!
2 person family (for now…). We don’t own a tv. If we want to watch a movie or a tv show (Lost!), we use the laptop– in bed, where we can get comfortable.
I think down the road we might buy a set, but since we don’t want to introduce any children that we might have to television while they’re still in diapers, that will probably be waaaaay down the road. And when that does happen, we probably will only use it to watch dvds– no cable.
We have two people and three tvs. When I moved in with my fiance I had zero (I was perfectly content with the occassional show streamed from the internet) and he had three. So now tvs do indeed outnumber people in our home.
We have two for two people. One in the living room and one in the bedroom (I know, but the hubs can’t sleep without background noise). We have a couple little ones sitting around from our college days but they aren’t hooked up. We might put one of them in our guest room – My mom likes to watch tv in bed, so it’ll help when she visits.
There is one of me and three TV’s. However 2 of them rarely get turned on and the third one gets turned on every once in awhile. I think I am justifying here.
2 adults and 1 toddler – and just 1 TV in the house. Our house is a small ranch like yours, so there’s really no need for another TV. As our daughter (and any future children) grow, they will NOT be allowed to have TVs in their bedrooms, either!
Just me and just one tv. I used to have two, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Since I moved I downgraded to just one television and I like it so much better. Who needs a tv in every room anyways?
2 people, 2 TV’s + 1 projector in our newly-designed “theater room” (which is only used occasionally to watch big games or new movies)
We (the Three W’s) have one tv that will more than likely not have cable when we move (whenever that happens). I’m thinking Netflix, newspaper subscription, and library books.
It’s official: I’m challenged. We have a second TV in the office that never gets used. So two TVs for three people.
Three people : one TV, which is, incidentally, borrowed. The one my husband brought into our marriage died a year ago, and we’re mooching off my MIL!
Does it count if the second TV is only used to feed the husband’s video game habit? :)
We have 3 TVs and 2 people. Interesting that someone brought up number of computers though…we have 6. :o
We have three TVs between the two of us, but only the 46″ gets used. The other two, from our college days, aren’t even hooked up.
1 TV and 2 people and 3 dogs and that 1 TV isn’t even hooked up to anything except the DVD player. So no cable/satellite just a good bit of netflix watching.
2 Adults-4 TV’s
I know it sounds a bit crazy, but we have one in our living room, bedroom, guest bedroom, and downstairs where my husband has his “man cave.”
Ick! I hate TV. I lived on my own from 2002 to 2008, and during those years, I have no TV, no Internet, and only a cell phone, that I turned off at home. Home was a no media zone, full of people and life, but no outside influences. I got my news at work and I turned on the cell phone once or twice an evening.
In 2008, I got married. Try as I might, I couldn’t convince my husband to throw away the TV and cancel the Internet. Right now, we have 2 TVs…one in his mancave and one in the living room (but behind the closed doors of an Ikea Besta cabinet). I don’t even know how to turn the one in the living room on, because you have to turn on the TV, the sound system, then the cable. No way.
I did recently have a small victory!! Woo for Elaine! The TV from the mancave is getting donated to our little brother this weekend! Sweet!! In its place are 2 brand new bookcases from Ikea!
I hate TV and if I have anything to do with it, our children won’t even know what a TV is until they see one at school.
Lol! I make myself sound like a lunatic!
Wait I have two that don’t have cable and one is going in a garage sale this weekend..so it will be one tv with cable and one tv with dvd only. Thus two tvs two people..Imagine a frown face right here.
One TV, two people. We don’t have cable, but we get about four HD channels from the antenna and use it mostly to watch Netflix movies every once in a while.
We’ve got 2 TVs for 2 adults and 1 puppy. The good TV with all the gear (DVD player, surround sound, WII) is in the living room of our itty bitty apartment. And we have one in our bedroom which doesn’t get used much but has definitely come in handy when I take over the TV for Design Star or Project Runway at which time the hubby runs for the bedroom. (Someday I’ll convert him!) I wish I could say we don’t watch much TV but that would be a lie. I am a hopeless addict to HGTV and TLC (with the occasional Bravo thrown in) and the hubby and I are huge movie buffs. So we’re 1:1 ratio right now. I don’t see ever having more than 2 tv’s though, even when we have kiddies running around so it will go down.
We have 2 people and 2 televisions (one upstairs and one downstairs), so we’re even. Unless you count the two cats. :)
In our house it’s 1 tv vs. 2 people. We want to get a projector someday for a theater room in the basement, but that’s still a long ways off on our renovation list.
Wow! I am embarassed to say that we have 5 TV’s and it’s just my husband and I. Living room, master, guest room, office, basement(gym), and there are times I’ve thought it would be nice to have one in the kitchen! I have no idea how we have accumulated so many. I guess we’re the ones driving up that ratio!
Two TVs Two people and I’m OK with it.
I have to fess up … we have 4 people and 3 TV’s. But in my defense we have neither cable nor satellite dish. Our TV’s are also ALL OVER 10 YEARS OLD so we have 2 DTV converter boxes. We have 1 TV in the basement for the kids to play video games (Mommy doesn’t want all that unsightly video mess in her pretty living room!) We have a TV in the living room & yes horror of horrors we have a small TV in our bedroom. Oh the shame ……
3 humans, 1 dusty TV, b/c we do most of our viewing on the laptop (netflix!)
2 people and 3 tv’s. Im going to be the oddball out here and profess my love for good, junky tv. One in Den, Master Bdrm, and Kitchen.
We have 3 tv’s and 5 computers to 4 people.
I’m cracking up at the people who said they won’t let their kids watch TV at all. I’d love to check back with them in a few years. . . . EVERYTHING in moderation, folks!
Ummm…I hate to admit it but we have 4 TVs and only 2 people. One in the living room, one in the master bedroom (to see Weather Channel in the morning), 1 in the exercise room (to make exercise a little more fun) and one in my husbands ‘man cave’. We only have 2 computers although I am thinking of getting another laptop to replace the old desktop clunker that is 8-9 years old. We don’t actually watch a lot of TV though as we both prefer to read but we have had these old TVs for quite a while and won’t get rid of them till they die.
Just one TV for our family of three (soon to be four). It’s in our entertainment room, which is completely separated from the rest of the living areas in our house. If it weren’t for Mr. Husband’s need for televised sports, we’d get rid of it altogether.