the concept of the "tv home" goes right back to the early days of radio where audience was measured at the "household" level.
The household concept came into being because in the first decades of radio, most homes only had a radio in the living room, and listening was a family occasion. This the measurement of the home rather than the person.
As radio moved into the era of the car, the portable and the kitchen radio, measurement became individual, not by family.
Television started in the same manner: Measurement of the one tv in the average home was the accepted and desired method. When metered tv measurement began around 1987 nielsen could measure the set, but not the number of viewers per set. So the household standard was kept.
And even today, most households do not have one tv per person.
So today, tv markets are measured by household. We know how many households have cable. We know how many have satellite. We know roughly how many use ota. And we know the area stations cover with either the signal or cable footprint, and that is the basis for the dma.
Even the us census gives us data on "dwelling units" (families, shared apartments, etc.) so the idea of a household quantification of tv penetration is quite logical. In fact, the census (and the interim acs data) gives nielsen plenty of data about households, ranging from size to age distribution to educational levels.
One of the most important economic indicators, consume spendable income, is generally expressed as household income. We use pci (per capita income) to make it more granular, but most economic statistics focus today on household income.
