The average American household now uses 13 different sources of TV entertainment, according to a new report from Hub Entertainment Research — the largest number of sources since the analytics firm started their entertainment survey.
The figure was released as part of the sixth wave of Hub’s “Battle Royale” survey, which landed earlier this month. It shows the average household uses 13.1 sources of TV entertainment as of October, up from 12.7 sources in 2023 and 12.5 sources recorded in 2022.
The sources of entertainment include streaming services, video game consoles, traditional TV and physical media. The data released this week tracks with an earlier report released by Hub that showed most Americans use around 13 sources of entertainment overall, split down the middle between streaming television (6.3) and other sources like social video, podcasts, news aggregators, books and gaming subscriptions (6.6).
In the sixth “Battle Royale” report, respondents said 6.4 of their sources were “must-haves,” while 6.7 sources were “nice to have.” The ratio was about the same between young media consumers and families, which were more likely to have a higher number of entertainment sources compared to others, Hub said.
“These findings underscore how competitive the entertainment landscape has become,” said Jon Giegengack, the founder and principal researcher at Hub. “In particular, video games, YouTube and TikTok are rapidly gaining share of mind among young consumers, who have an entirely different idea of what ‘entertainment’ means and are forming habits unlikely to change as they grow older.”
