Pittsburgh leads the nation in watching the most live television; so that's something, we guess

By Sean O'Neal | May 14, 2013 | 7:18pm

Aux Features TV

Pittsburgh, previously known as “The Steel City” for its many beautiful steel trees, shall henceforth be known as The City That Watches The Most Live TV, after a new Nielsen report determined it leads the nation in live TV viewing, and we decided that it’s a way better nickname. During the most recent sweeps period, the average Pittsburgh resident watched around five-and-a-half hours of live TV per day—a number that can probably be traced to Pittsburgh’s proudly blue-collar roots in its distrust of fancy DVRs, or in the vast numbers of Pittsburghers who stumble home from a long day at the factory, their battered, industrious hands far too weak and calloused to mash the buttons on their remote control. “Are yinz just gonna lay there watching The Voice? We're missing the Steelers game,” an average Pittsburgh resident will say to their spouse, neither physically able to lift their exhausted, steel-bending arms. “Carnegie Mellon is one of our most famous universities and we have 446 bridges,” their typical Pittsburgh spouse will reply, very typically.

Coming in second in the report was St. Louis, where watching live TV accounted for those five hours and 23 minutes per day its residents spent not riding the Arch up and down. Other top contenders were Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Detroit, who all watched around five hours and 15 minutes of live TV per day, rather than visiting with friends and neighbors in the welcoming streets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Meanwhile, San Francisco ranked the lowest at a mere two hours and 57 minutes spent watching live televisions they don’t even own, so there must be some mistake.