America's business elite - high-powered, influential senior execs, CEOs and other C-suite officers from mid-sized and large companies - have a ferocious appetite for quality business information, according to a new survey carried out by Ipsos Media, writes MarketingCharts.

Top business leaders are also media-savvy, acquiring the information they need from a variety of sources, including magazines and journals, the internet, and digital and satellite television, according to Ipsos Media's business-elite survey.

America's 630,000 senior business executives represent over 72,000 companies, the survey found. This group is responsible for over $1.7 trillion in annual expenditures - a figure greater than the gross domestic product of Italy, or that of Russia and Australia combined - and employ/oversee some 144 million people, approximately two-thirds of the US workforce - or half the nation's adult population.

America's business elite have a healthy appetite for information and media, in particular when the information helps them make better and more informed business decisions:

• The internet is becoming a major source of information, with over two-thirds spending more time reading business information on the web than in the past.
• Although executives view the internet as being a particularly good source for business news updates, only 7 percent are willing to pay for online business news.
• Websites also prove to be important for improving a business publication's overall offering, even more so than websites for TV channels:
  • Over three-quarters way a website is an important part of a business publication's overall offering.
  • Only one-third say a website is an important part of a TV channel's overall offering.

Other top-level findings related to media:

• Nine in ten have read the last issue of a print medium.
• Seven in ten have watched a Network TV channel in the previous day.
• Six in ten have watched a Cable TV channel in the previous day.
• Just over half went online in the previous day.
• Seven in ten have received a daily email alert or newsletter in the last month.
• Nearly half have streamed or watched a broadband video from computer in the last month.
• One-third have read a blog in the last month, but only 5 percent have actually written a post.
• Nearly a quarter have downloaded a podcast in the last month.

MarketingCharts provides additional findings, including demographic data on the "average business leader."