84% of iPad owners say that keeping up with news is their main use of their tablet

"Among 1,600 iPad owners polled by the Reynolds Journalism Institute this fall, 84.4% identified keeping up with news and current events as a main use of the new tablet. Leisure reading (81.5%) was not far behind, followed closely by browsing the Web (80.8%).
In terms of engagement, a massive 78.6% report spending at least 30 minutes a day with news content on the iPad. In this same group, only 52.5% spend the same time with news on TV, while 50.7% spend that much news consumption time on the PC. In fact, 48.9% of iPad owners are reporting that they are engaged in news reading for one hour or more on a typical day. Irrespective of just news consumption, the large majority of owners (62.7%) says they spend at least an hour in a typical day with the device.
One reason news consumption may skew so high in this survey over other content categories is the extreme gender skew of the device among these respondents – 80.2% male. That high percentage may be an anomaly for this survey. A previous Yahoo survey of iPad users also found a male-skewing demo, but at the much lower rate of about 60%. For now at least, the iPad owner fits the early adopter profile: 55.6% making over $100,000 in household income; 76.3% with college degrees or better; and 69.5% ages 35 to 64."
Source:  Min Online, 10th December 2010