The decline in live TV viewing slowed in the third quarter, according to a new report by Nielsen, which also showed the number of TV households dropping as more people add streaming services.
The amount of time people spent watching live TV per day dropped by one minute to 4 hours and 6 minutes in the third quarter from Q3 2015, according to Nielsen’s third-quarter Total Audience Report. The amount of time spent with DVRs and time-shifted TV, rose by that same amount to 29 minutes from 28 minutes.
In the second quarter, live viewing dropped two minutes. A year ago in the third quarter, there was a bigger drop of 6 minutes to 4 hours and 13 minutes.
Time spent using an app on a smartphone rose to 2:10 from 1:14 a year ago. Some of the growth was the result of a change Nielsen made to the way it credits mobile use.
The number of TV households with subscription video-on-demand services, such as Netflix, rose to 54% in the third quarter of 2016 from 46% a year earlier. But SVOD had only a small rise from 53% in the second quarter.
