54% of NY Subway Riders Consume Media During Commute
By Howard Polskin
February 11, 2012: The Tab Farm’s exclusive survey of NYC subway straphangers found that 54% of riders consumed some type of media during their commute. That means 46% of commuters did not consume media. This study was conducted during the week of February 6, 2012, and The Tab Farm observed riders on the R and N trains coming from Queens and heading into Manhattan for the morning survey. In the afternoon, The Tab Farm got on the R or N train at 57th and 7th and got off the train at 60th and Lexington before it headed back to Queens. The Tab Farm measures mobile media consumption of tablets, e-readers, smartphones, newspapers, magazines, books and iPods in New York subways. The Tab Farm cautions that these figures should not be taken as the definitive study of subway commuter media consumption habits. It is intended to be a snapshot of this type of activity in a very small stretch of the subway line.
Based on the information The Tab Farm collected for the week of February 6, and the breakdown of specific forms of media consumption, we conclude that about 8% of total subway ridership this year is using a tablet or an e-reader during the commute. (We would guess that the numbers would be much lower in economically distressed neighborhoods.) The table below provides the estimates of percent of subway ridership using a specific form of media.
| Device | January 2012. Percent of Mobile Media Consumers in Subways Using This Media | January 2012. Percent of Total Subway Ridership Using This Media |
| Smartphones | 40% | 22% |
| Newspapers | 16% | 9% |
| E-Readers | 10% | 5% |
| Tablets | 6% | 3% |
| iPods | 1% | .5% |
| Books | 18% | 10% |
| Magazines | 8% | 4% |