Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Even though Americans are being offered more TV channels than ever, the number that they choose to watch isn't growing at all. Those are the findings of Nielsen Media Research in their annual report on U.S. TV audiences.

This isn't too much of a surprise as most marketers know that no matter how many options are available, people will only watch so many of them. The average American household now has over 100 channels they can choose to watch on their Television sets. The number available has now increased to 104.2 on average in 2006, up from 96.4 in 2005.

The number of channels actually watched has stayed about the same, coming in at 15.7 percent in 2006. The year 2004 was the first that Nielsen measured that statistic, and they were at 15.0 channels watched at that time.

The real question in all of this is how the coming world of virtually endless channels is going to impact TV. In the one year since Nielsen implemented its A2/M2 (Anytime/Anywhere) initiative, the share that TV channels get has declined by a percentage point already.

At the same time, according to the research, Americans are spending more time watching regular TV than they ever have. Most of that is relegated to young girls that have the TV on in the morning before they go to school.

Still, something will have to give here. There is already the start of choice fatique, and in reality it's only just begun. The idea that people are watching more TV is somewhat surprising, but as other studies have shown, it's because of pre-school habits of female tweens that are making that happen.

When the slew of online offerings increase, as they've already began to do, that will be a defining moment as to how this will all work out for traditional television. Even with online streaming and DVR playback, there are only so many hours in a day that can be used to watch regular TV. It'll probably take about three to four years to see how online TV options will impact tradtional television viewing.