[Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

[Gerry Creager]

Joe Landman wrote:
> Jim Lux wrote:
>> At 10:38 AM 7/18/2007, Joe Landman wrote:
>>> Jim Lux wrote:
>>>
>>>> The average person spends roughly 3700 hours per year consuming 
>>>> enetertainment, of which more than 3500 are some form of audio or 
>>>> video (i.e. not reading)
>>>
>>> I would love to hear where that data came from.
>>
>>
>> Here's the breakdown... hours per person per year
>> for year 2004
>> Filmed Entertainment:
>> Cable and Satellite TV  1010
> 
> Whoa... 1010 hours?
> 
> Thats 11.5% of a day, every day, watching cable tv ...  3 hours.
> 
>> Broadcast TV 782
> 
> 8.9% of the day watching broadcast TV (2.1 hours)
> 
>> Consumer Internet 189
> 
> I wonder what this means ...
> 
>> Home Video 78
>> Box Office 13 (e.g. movies and live theater)
>> Interactive TV 3
>> Subtotal 2075
> 
> Uh... I must be wayyyyy behind in my entertainment quota.  Will the 
> entertainment police stop by and force me to watch Oprah?
> 
>>
>> Other
>> Broadcast and satellite radio: 1035
> 
> Er... Another 3 hours per day.
> 
>> Recorded music 180
>> Daily Newspapers 169
>> Consumer Magazines 118  (obviously, this doesn't include reading Trans 
>> ACM)
>> Consumer Books  107
>> Video Games     71  (which seems low to me, but perhaps its strangely 
>> defined)
>> Subtotal 1680
>>
>> These were summarized in a presentation I got a few years back, but 
>> they're based on data (in part) from a source like this:
>> http://www.mpaa.org/USEntertinmentIndustryMarketStats.pdf
>> which has 2006 numbers..
> 
> ummmm  someone (mpaa cough cough) is *seriously* overestimating some 
> things.
> 
>>
>> Take a look at slide #49
>>
>>
>> Now, clearly, these numbers are used as marketing stuff for filmed 
>> entertainment, so they're going to try and show as much film and as 
> 
> Yeah....
> 
> Ok, I am just caught up with how wrong their data seems.  I have 
> internet radio on in the background while I code/think... does that make 
> it 16 hours a day I consume things?
> 
> Am I alone in thinking these numbers are screwy?  Or I am so far behind 
> in my own self-entertainment quota that a month long vacation is 
> mandated with a force fed diet of DRM protected movies, radio, ...

If I allowed data like this to creep into presentations or theses my 
grad students put forward, I'd lose my job!  I realize my entertainment 
often looks like revising weather models, and my wife thinks I should 
take her to more movies but I couldn't achieve these numbers even if I 
was what passes for Normal in our home town!

-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843