By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

The average American home now has more television sets than people.
That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to
Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and
2.55 people, the researchers said.

With televisions now on buses, elevators and in airport lobbies, that
development may have as much to do with TV's ubiquity as an appliance
as it does conspicuous consumption. The popularity of flat-screen TVs
now make it easy to put sets where they haven't been before.

Rick Melen, a facilities manager, has three sets in the Somers, N.Y.,
home he shares with his wife. That doesn't count the bathroom set that
broke down and hasn't been replaced or the speakers installed near
their hot tub, allowing them to watch a wide screen set through a
window.

"It's really just a matter of where your living takes place, what
rooms you tend to spend your time in," Melen said on Thursday. "Other
appliances you can move from room to room but if you have cable, you
can't move a television."

His wife might want to watch something while she's cooking while he's
got a baseball game on downstairs, he said.

Half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent
have just one, Nielsen said. In 1975, 57 percent of homes had only a
single set and 11 percent had three or more, the company said.

David and Teresa Leon of Schenectady, N.Y. and their four-year-old
twins have seven sets, plus an eighth they haven't set up yet. They
include TVs in both the parents' and kids' bedrooms, the family and
living rooms and one in the kitchen that is usually turned to a news
station.

"No one ever sits down for more than a few seconds in this house,"
said Teresa, a stenographer. "This way you can watch TV while you're
moving from room to room, folding laundry or taking care of the kids."

In the average home, a television set is turned on for more than a
third of the day _ eight hours, 14 minutes, Nielsen said. That's an
hour more than it was a decade ago. Most of that extra TV viewing is
coming outside of prime time, where TVs are on only four minutes more
than they were 10 years ago.

The average person watches four hours, 35 minutes of television each
day, Nielsen said.

While people are watching more television, ratings for the big
broadcast networks have declined steadily. That's a function of the
greater number of channel choices available in each home, the company
said.

One new Nielsen finding _ that young people aged 12 to 17 watched 3
percent more television during the season that ended in May than they
had the previous year _ is a particular relief to TV network
executives.

For a few years, Nielsen had been finding that TV viewing among
teenagers was flat or even declining, a trend blamed on the Internet
or the popularity of electronic games and other devices.

"There are just more opportunities for them to watch whatever they
want to watch," said Patricia McDonough, Nielsen's senior vice
president of planning policy and analysis.

Oddly, one of the driving factors is teenage girls watching more TV
late at night or early in the morning, she said.

(end of article)