Bad News for You, Good News for TV

Everyone's harping about how the housing bubble, credit crunch, recession, and wholesale layoffs are bad for everyone. How about focusing for a bit about how economic collapse is good for some people?

TV executives, for example. A study published in the December issue of Social Indicators Research (forgive us if you're already gotten your copy) finds that unhappy people watch a lot more TV.

The study -- "What Do Happy People Do?" -- was written by Professor John P. Robinson and Assistant Professor Steven P. Martin of the University of Maryland.

After reviewing 34 years of data collected by the General Social Survey, the two sociologists said that the pattern of unhappy people spending more time in front of the TV was "particularly dramatic."

People who described themselves as "not happy" spent 30 percent more time on TV than people who said they were "very happy" -- 3.5 hours per day compared with 2.7 hours per day. That extra 48 minutes gives networks time to deliver a couple dozen extra 30-second spots every day.

They found no similar pattern for other media like newspapers or the internet. In fact, unhappy people seem to spend less time reading newspapers, which can't be very reassuring to publishers already being hammered by declining ad sales.

If it's any consolation to newspaper owners, Robinson and Martin noted that the correlation between reduced happiness and increased TV watching "reinforces conclusions from earlier studies of TV's dysfunctional role in American society." Still, ratings are ratings.

Besides, the academics were reluctant to actually blame TV for making people unhappy, though they left open that possibility. "Whether that means happiness leads to lower viewing, or that more viewing leads to unhappiness, cannot be determined from these data," they wrote.

More research and observation is required, they said. Is there, perhaps, a reality TV show in here somewhere?

by Mark Stein