Nielsen, the TV ratings people, are out with the 2012 edition of their Television Audience report, and amidst all the charts and graphs, two stunners:

The total number of U.S. households with TV sets declined year to year for the first time since Nielsen started counting TV ownership.

The number of households with no TV at all is at its highest level since 1975. Three percent of homes are TV-free.

The decline was not trivial, either — from 115.9 million TV households in 2011, Nielsen estimates that only 114.7 million homes in the U.S. will have a TV set in 2012. That’s a decline of almost 1 percent at a time when the number of U.S. households continues to grow.