Poll: TVs, land line phones less popular

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Many Americans are abandoning televisions and land line telephones, once fixtures in every household, considering them unnecessary, a U.S. poll indicates.

Just 42 percent say they consider a television set a necessity, down from 52 percent in 2009 and 64 percent in 2006, a Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends poll revealed.

Land line telephones fared a bit better, with 62 percent of Americans still calling them a necessary item in their lives.

Still, there's bad news looming for the phones, as almost half those polled said a modern competitor -- the cellphone -- is a necessity.

In the poll, 84 percent of adults said they used cellphones compared with 74 percent of households with a land line, down from 97 percent of households with land lines in 2001.

While television sets may be disappearing, study researchers say, that doesn't mean there's less to watch; it's just not confined to the living room, as 52 percent of those polled said they watch online video on their computers.

And 14 percent said they watched video, including television programming, on their cellphones.

The poll was conducted in May with 2,967 adults responding. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.