“We know Americans spend about nine hours daily with radio, television, magazine, newspaper, computer and other media, but looking at media use solely in accumulated total minutes barely scratches the surface of how we use various media,” said Michael Holmes, CMD [Center for Media Design] faculty research fellow and communication studies professor.

“We dug deeper, looking at a variety of issues related to spending time with the media,” he said. “Our findings for concurrent media exposure — what others call media multitasking — varied depending on the media, time of day, day of week and a person’s location.”

The new white paper reveals:
• Television dominates in the home, radio is the main medium in the car and computer usage is common both at work and home.
• Magazines are the medium with the largest proportion of time used at “other” locations, which is due, in part, to print publications found in public places where people wait for service.
• Most people read newspapers in the morning.
• Television dominates as a news source in the early morning; up to 70 percent of participants watch television in the evenings.
• Magazines show heavier readership on Mondays (29.1 percent) and Fridays (34.7 percent), newspaper readership peaks on Sundays and television exposure is lowest on the weekends.
• Participants were observed using all five ad-supported media while involved in everyday life activities. For example, for time spent with television, the top three non-media activities — eating, housework, and work — were relatively equal, together occupying about 19 percent of TV viewing minutes.
• Radio maintained its reputation as a classic background medium, with participants listening as an exclusive activity only 24 percent of the time.
• Almost half of all magazine exposure is experienced with television in the background, while television is the highest-ranked partner for newspapers by average minutes (51.6 percent of all newspaper time).

Good grief. Enough information here for a dozen studies.