Study tracks TV-watching habits of college students

Classes? What classes?

A new study reveals that college students watch an average of three hours, 41 minutes of television each day.

Viewing peaks in the late-night hours for college males, interrupting any cramming for exams, according to a report by Nielsen Media Research, the primary service for measuring TV audiences.

“It was a little more than I expected it to be,” said Pat McDonough, Nielsen’s senior vice president of planning, policy and analysis.

But it’s less – by about an hour – than the amount of time an average American spends watching TV each day, Nielsen said.

The company has been able to track the TV habits of college-age men and women when they’re living at home but until last fall had no reliable measurement of what students were watching in their dorms, fraternities or sororities, or college apartments.

For college men, the 10 most-watched programs last October were all baseball games, primarily postseason games involving the Boston Red Sox as the team marched to its first World Series championship in 86 years.

For college women, the favorite show in October was NBC’s “Joey,” Nielsen said. The women also liked ABC’s short-lived “Life As We Know It,” set in a high school.

In an era when many people watch television alone, a large amount of college students watch with their roommates and others, meaning they have to negotiate over which programs to tune in, Nielsen said.

By almost 2-to-1, college students watched more shows on cable networks than on broadcast television.