Heavy/Light Television/Print Media Users

We live in an information society in which much of our knowledge of the daily world comes to us through media channels.  Two major forms of media communication are television and print media.  However, people have varying degrees of dependency on these media.  Some people may be information-hungry, using any and all forms of media.  Some people may read less and watch more television.  Some people may prefer to read intelligently rather than use the 'boob' tube.  Other people may be totally disinterested in the type of information that appears in media today.  The manner in which people use (or not use) television and print media is therefore an expression of information style. 

We will now attempt to characterize the heavy and light users of television and print media with some data from the MARS study.  This is a mail survey of persons 18+ conducted in the USA during 2001.  From this survey, we know the average number of hours spent watching television per day.  We were therefore able to group people into quintiles (20 percentiles).  Our heavy television viewers are in the top quintile, while our light television viewers are in the bottom quintile.  We also know the number of magazines read out of a roster of 100 large consumer magazine titles.  Once again, we grouped people into quintiles.  Our heavy magazine readers are in the top quintile, while our light magazine readers are in the bottom quintile.

By definition, each of the heavy/light television/print media user groups constitute 20% of the population.  If television viewing was an activity that is independent of magazine reading, then the four combinations would each be 20% x 20% = 4% of the population.  In practice, we find these frequencies from the MARS study:

In the next table, we show the results by demographic group.  This information is presented in the form of indices.  For example, we know that the percent of heavy television/heavy print users is 4.8%; within men, the percent is 3.2%, which is expressed as an index of 100 x 3.2 / 4.8 = 66.  Therefore, an index of 100 means that the demographic group has exactly the same percentage of the media users as the population; an index less than 100 means less, and an index greater than 100 means more.

Demographic Group Heavy television/
heavy print		 Heavy television/
Light print		 Light television/
Heavy print		 Light television/
light print
Sex
     Male
     Female
  66
132
103
  98
  78
120
136
  66
Age
     18-24
     25-34
     35-49
     50-64
     65+
  86
  91
  98
104
122
100
  67
  90
100
158
136
  79
119
127
  25
188
  58
  97
  88
  99
Educational Level
     Less than high school
     High school grad
     Some college
     Completed college
     Post-graduate
  81
  97
132
  82
  83
231
101
  67
  51
  29
  65
  85
122
126
119
149
108
  73
  76
  91
Personal Income
     $50,000 or more
     $100,000 or more
    40
    72
  40
  53
  96
164
  84
  63

In words, the characterization might go as follows.

 (posted by Roland Soong, 1/14/2002)

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