Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[I]t’s no secret that Vermonters do some things more than most other Americans: make maple syrup, vote for Democrats, ski, hike, hunt.
But here – less well known – is something they do less than most other Americans: watch television.
At least from 2013 through 2017 (and why should it have changed much since?) the typical Vermonter spent two hours, 19 minutes and 41 seconds watching television every day.
Let’s round that off to two hours and 20 minutes, which is 26 fewer minutes than his/her counterparts in the country at large.
Just think! Almost an extra half hour to do something better.
How effectively Vermonters exploit that time remains a mystery. And it is worth noting that even in Vermont – and in the two states where people watch less TV than Vermonters do – watching television is how most people spend most of their free time.
The data comes from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in a report issued late last year.
The states with less television viewing were Utah (two hours and 14 minutes, rounding off the seconds to the nearest minute) and Maine (two hours, 18 minutes).
Most glued to their tubes were West Virginians, where the average person watched four and a half hours of TV every day. Most of the other heavy TV-watching states were in the Southeast and the Midwest, though Delaware, Oklahoma and Nevada were also in the top 10.
As to Vermont’s neighbors, New Hampshirites spent two hours, 40 minutes, New Yorkers two hours, 53 minutes, and Massachusetts residents two hours and 58 minutes watching TV.
(Other measurements indicate that Americans spend more time watching television than this one suggests. Different missions. Different methods. Differences not worth exploring here. Also “glued to their tubes” should not be taken literally. As ATUS defines it, “watching television” includes time “spent watching live programming, viewing DVDs, and streaming shows on their TV sets, computers, and portable devices.”).
OK. Now for the cosmic question: Why? Why do Vermonters watch less TV than most other Americans?
To which the only definitive answer is: Go figure. This is not a question that can be conclusively answered by data or empirically testable evidence. It’s all speculative. Nobody is a credentialed, designated, expert in this field, and the people who come closest (the speculating usual suspects) are college professors who aren’t easy to reach this time of year.
So to speculate, Vermont is 95% white, and whites (not according to ATUS, but from other sources) watch less TV than African Americans or Hispanics (though slightly more than Asian Americans).
On the other hand, Vermonters are old. Vermont has the third highest median age (42.6 years old) of any state, and old people watch more television.
But maybe not in Vermont, or, it seems, in Maine, where the median age is even higher (44.6) and the TV-watching even rarer.
And the youngest state of all? Utah, median age 31 and the very least TV watching.
Again, go figure.
Men watch more television than women. But Vermont has the same male-female distribution (51% female) as the rest of the country, so that wouldn’t be a factor.
Several of the lower-watching states are, like Vermont, areas which attract outdoor recreationists. So it’s possible that many a Vermonter is out on the ski slopes, the hiking trail, or the hunting camp while their counterparts elsewhere are watching TV.
Tom Streeter used to be chair of the University of Vermont’s sociology department. But having decamped to Western University in London, Ontario, he was “not in a position to offer anything but hunches about how to interpret that finding,” but said he “suspects that it has to do with Vermont’s traditions of community building.”
Jerald Swope, the department chair and associate professor of media studies, journalism & digital arts at St. Michael’s College, also speculating (this is not, he made clear, his area of expertise) said Vermont’s “emphasis on community” might be a factor. “People engaging more with their neighbors and valuing community might be spending less time in front of the TV,” he said.
UVM sociology professor Tom Macias very kindly responded to an email by calling all the way from Marseille, where he has been on a fellowship for a year, to suggest a possible connection between TV watching and higher education.
Macias, too, noted that he was speculating, but recalled a study he had done comparing residents of Chittenden County with those of Maricopa County, Arizona (that’s Phoenix).
“In Chittenden, the individual educational level was much higher, with 28.5 percent having a graduate degree versus 16.7 percent in Maricopa,” Macias said.
It makes sense that people with more education watch less television. They read more, and it’s hard to read and watch TV at the same time.
But what about Massachusetts? It’s almost as white as Vermont, has a higher percentage of college graduates, and is quite a bit wealthier. But folks down there watch 38 more minutes a day of TV than do Vermonters.
Go figure.