Predicting Audience Exposure to Television in Today's Media Environment: An Empirical Integration of Active-Audience and Structural Theories

Scholars have long advocated empirical integration of active-audience and structural theories to best explain audience exposure to television. This study incorporated both uses and gratifications and structural variables in an integrated model of audience exposure. Results indicated that seven statistically significant factors—ritualistic motivations, use of the Internet, audience availability, the cost of multi-channel service, age, instrumental motivations, and gender—combined to explain 30.3% of the variance in audience exposure to television. Findings suggest that no single theoretical construct explains the complexities that determine exposure to television. Future inquiry should continue to seek theoretical and empirical integration as a way to understand and explain media behavior.