Middle aged women watched the most hours of television per week in a survey of viewing habits of Americans of different ages conducted in Chicago, Los Angeles and metropolitan New York City. The survey was conducted by Integrated Media Measurement Intelligence (IMMI) which summarized the results in a  press release that noted in part that:

“females ages 45-54 will spend the most time watching television, DVDs and theatrical releases in 2007, an estimated 47.6 days (1,142 hours).  Males in the same age group are on track to watch 40.2 days worth of media.”

Noting that older Americans of both genders in the sample group watched more than did younger subjects, IMMI attributed this to the supposition that young people are shifting their leisure hours to computers, video games and iPods, at the expense of the boob tube.

“Teens embrace new content delivery and entertainment technologies at a much faster pace than their parents, so we will naturally see a widening gap in the amount of television viewing time between the two groups,” said Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI.

There wasn’t much info in the release about how many persons were in the sample, which suggests to me the numbers of particpants were few, but the web site research overview says the tracking is done by a a cell phone that appears to monitor media useage so as not to rely upon the subject’s recollection.

On a personal note for Silicon Valley folks who may recall the name, IMMI is headed by Tom Zito, whose previous credits include the video game firm Digital Pictures.

Back to the usege issue, Ball State University’s Center for Media Design has carved out a niche as the academic leader in media consumption measurement. Check out this prior blog post for more on Ball State.