Internet usage is starting to vie with television viewing  in some periods of the day.
    Between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., internet usage rates actually top TV usage rates, with the biggest disparity occurring between 9-10 a.m. At that time, only 12 percent of TV users are watching their sets, whereas 18 percent of internet users  are on line. 
   So reports Rob Frydlewicz, head of research at Foote Cone & Belding, who looked at recent data from Nielsen Media Research's NetRatings division.
    According to those data, as many as 94 percent of workers with access to the internet go online at some point during the day on Tuesdays, the peak day of the weak for the internet.
   The workplace average for internet usage between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. was 80 percent.
   At home, the figures were a little lower, ranging from 61 percent on Friday to 68 percent on Tuesday.
   More than half of the country's population with internet access went on the internet at some point between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m., according to the Nielsen data.
     Frydlewicz says that with 47 percent of the population currently linked to the web at home, that works out to 27 percent of everyone over the age of 2 going using the internet at some time during the evening hours.
   That compares to a usage rate of 41 percent of the population for television.
   Peak internet usage, says Frydlewicz, occurs between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., slightly overlapping the period of peak TV usage, which occurs between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.
   Frydlewicz says that internet usage rates are higher than TV viewing during the day between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. The two rates are about equal between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. and between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.
   The greatest disparity in usage rates occurs during primetime, with TV usage between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. at 41 percent and internet usage during that period at just 24 percent.
   Between 10 p.m and 11 p.m., TV usage was 36 percent, while internet usage was only 21 percent.
   Frydlewicz notes that there was no bump up in internet usage at home in the early evening just as workers return from the job.
    "Perhaps they've had their fill of online activity at the office," he speculates.

-Dave Lindroff covers television and research for Media Life.

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