Abstract
This paper explores factors for declining real-time TV viewing in the morning by summarizing people’s media use in the morning hours based on the results of the 2022 Nationwide Public Opinion Survey on Attitudes Towards Media and remarks made in online focus group interviews.
It is found that habitual media use in the morning hours is compatible with the needs in each situation of everyday life and that these needs comprise various elements such as mood, information, and time consciousness. In the morning, people use smartphones from the start of the day, access their smartphones before television, and view a wide variety of media content on smartphones immediately after they wake up. People’s moods change from moment to moment, from when they wake up to afterwards, according to each life situation: for example, many people do not want to be exposed to stimulating information when waking up but want to watch content that would make them feel positive after getting up. Some can feel uplifted by TV news programs, and others by YouTube videos, which shows that people have come to get the utility that they want to feel in the morning not only from television but also from diverse media. Furthermore, there is a possibility that “acquiring information while doing something”—an advantageous feature of real-time TV viewing—is being substituted by other media. It is also suggested that real-time TV viewing’s characteristic utilities for “using as a clock” and “getting a daily rhythm” are no longer sought after because nowadays fewer people check the time with television and, in the first place, few young people use media habitually. These circumstances may explain the decline in real-time viewing in the morning.
