According to a new study (PDF link), women are more likely to stream TV shows from network web sites than men, and they're more likely to time-shift their TV viewing with a personal video recorder. While both of these activities may seem like the geeky domain of guys with thick glasses, there's a pretty simple explanation. Men are more likely to watch sports, which is far more time sensitive than most other programs. If you took any group of folks and divided them up into heavy sports viewers and people who watch, well, pretty much anything else, you'd probably find that group B spends more time with the PVR too.

The study from Solutions Research Group found that 15% of women watched a streaming network TV program last month, while just 11% of men did. And women time-shift about 56% of their television viewing, compared to 42% for men.

The study also looks at other digital lifestyle activities like video game usage, online shopping, and downloading movies from the internet.

[via CNet]

Men are becoming the minority in newsrooms across the country. According to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 42% of anchors are men. That's down from 46% in 1996. One of the reasons? The ultimate goal for many male journalism students is in sports. But, sports is a dying genre at local news stations across the country. Another reason, stated in an article in the Boston Globe, is that anchoring isn't really as manly as it used to be back in the days of Walter Kronkite and Edward R. Murrow. They were a breed of anchor who came across as tough on government corruption, whereas anchors these days are pretty boys who are more even-tempered and less aggressive. News readers, really.

While it's nice to see that women are kickin' butt in television, it's also a sad commentary on the role of the anchorman in our society and in news in general. These days the anchors are hired as personalities, not news gatherers.