Only 42 percent of Americans in 2010 said they felt that a television set was “a necessity,” according to a telephone survey of nearly 3,000 people conducted in May by the Pew Research Center. The proportion of people counting a TV as a must-have has shrunk by one third since 2006, when 64 percent of Americans said they needed one.
However, as Pew points out, these numbers do not mean that Americans are throwing away their televisions. The number of televisions per home has risen steadily, according to Nielsen, so that more than half of American homes have three or more televisions. Rather, they suggest a decline in the perceived status of the television set.
Read more at the New York Times.
