Interesting study from Ball State:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.92e661444313b232e8931de00c29...
"Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.
"The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.
"The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older"...
"-- computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just over two minutes a day."
I think these numbers make a pretty powerful argument for the idea that the labor movement should consider investing more $$ in getting our message out via the broadcast media.
The ideal would be for us to launch our own own cable channel (which would have to be followed by a campaign to pressure cable providers to include it in their standard service). If that's financially unfeasible, maybe a more modest alternative would be to have a union-produced and sponsored show appear on one of the cable TV networks. Maybe a drama about an organizing drive or a strike? A union soap opera anybody?
Hopefully some of the labor could come from volunteers from the entertainment unions (SAG, Directors and Writers Guilds) which would help keep production costs down.
The one finding in the study I found somewhat surprising was how little time is spent accessing online videos. That jibes with my own personal experience - watching a video implies the commitment of at least a few minutes (vs. a minute or two to skim a written article) so I usually don't take the opportunity to do so.
To me this suggests that at this posting videos to the web may not be a very effective way of communicating with the public, though they may be useful for internal morale (I'm much more likely to watch a video of an event that I personally attended.)
Of course, habits are likely to change as the lines begin to blur between internet and broadcast content; i.e., when it's as easy to access an internet video from your TV as it is to access TV programming from your computer. But that's likely to be a few years away yet for most people.
