Less TV watching and morning increase

Americans are turning away from live TV on the tube and tuning in to streaming services, a Nielsen report says.

That's bad news for cable and satellite TV providers. Americans are increasingly watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services. CBS and HBO have announced standalone streaming services as well.

About 45 percent of Americans stream television shows at least once a month, according to research firm eMarketer. That number is expected to increase to 53 percent or 175 million people by 2018, it says.

According to the Nielsen report, which came out Wednesday, the average daily time spent watching live TV fell 12 minutes in the third quarter to four hours and 32 minutes. That means it dropped nearly 4 percent to 141 hours per month.

Meanwhile, time spent watching streaming services jumped 60 percent to nearly 11 hours each month.

That's still a small amount compared with live TV, but it is growing quickly.

"Content is still king, but consumers are shaping their own content-discovery experience, and the evolving media landscape has not lessened consumer demand for quality, professionally produced content," Dounia Turrill, senior vice president of insights at Nielsen, said in a statement. "What has changed is the number and reliability of new media available to viewers."

MORNING

As “Today” and “Good Morning America” continue to duke it out for morning television's top spot, “CBS This Morning” has been quietly but aggressively closing the gap. In the last couple of years, “CTM” has gone through a complete reboot in a last-ditch effort to save what was until recently a morning TV dud.

And it seems to be working.

While “Today” looks more and more like a reality show with one controversy after another, and “GMA” offers celebrity interviews earlier than ever, “CBS This Morning” has been doing the exact opposite. With an entire new team of anchors, helmed by a new executive producer, “CTM” has done a 180-degree reversal, offering its viewers a calmer experience and more hard news.

“We're doing something different as opposed to trying to imitate what the other two guys are doing quite well,” executive producer Chris Licht told TheWrap. “You're giving people another option.”

In the cutthroat world that is morning television, CBS was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. With a revolving door of suitors in the form of anchors and formats that never quite managed to engage viewers, the network's morning show was headed for spinsterhood.

But since its debut in 2012, the network's latest installment, “CBS This Morning,” anchored by Charlie Rose, Norah O'Donnell and Gayle King, is looking a lot more like marriage material. It managed to not only stop the ratings hemorrhage but also capture a big slice of the lucrative morning ratings pie. In less than two years, the show has increased its audience by an astounding 600,000 viewers — a 23 percent jump.