Parents Urged Again to Limit TV for Youngest

Parents of infants and toddlers should limit the time their children spend in front of televisions, computers, self-described educational games and even grown-up shows playing in the background, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned on Tuesday, reports The New York Times.

Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.

Read more.

Largest survey among file-sharers in history shows girls not interested in The Pirate Bay

The Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University partnered with The Pirate Bay earlier this year to carry out the largest survey among file-sharers in history. 75,000 people from all over the world participated in the study, and today the researchers revealed some of the initial results. Girls don’t fancy The Pirate Bay, most pirates download movies, and they are increasingly worried about their anonymity. Also:

-- The majority of the respondents are young men between the ages of 18 and 24.

-- More than 80 percent of all respondents say they’ve downloaded movies.

In the coming weeks the researchers will delve deeper into the data and the full results are expected to be released in November. Aside from the lack of girls, some interesting patterns should emerge from the file-sharers’ brains.

[Read full post in TorrentFreak]

Is watching TV as bad as smoking? Does it make you die younger?

Beware any headline in a newspaper or blog that starts with a question, writes Medical correspondent Fergus Walsh for the BBC.

Generally the answer to the question is no, and is a means for the writer to grab the reader's attention and then proceed to irritate them.

Walsh poses the question because of a study that may well get some media attention. Published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine it suggests that compared to people who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of watching six hours a day can expect to live nearly five years less.

... The paper's conclusions that "TV viewing may have adverse health consequences that rival those of lack of physical activity, obesity and smoking; every single hour of TV viewed may shorten life by as much as 22 min.

Read more.

Is the internet going to be the death of television?

The BBC takes on the confusing picture of Television and TV on the Internet - as we watch more video than ever before this way. But we're also watching more television. What is less clear is where the broadcast industry is ultimately headed.

Do You Suffer from Netflix Streaming Syndrome?

Watching countless movies or TV shows whenever you want to is giving rise according to Gawker, to Netflix Streaming Syndrome, or elsewhere around the world where Neflix is not available, just plain Streaming Syndrome.

Symptoms include:

-- Insomnia brought on by watching every episode of a compelling series in a row at the expense of getting a good night's sleep.

-- Anti-social behavior as a result of staying in and making it a "Netflix night" rather than going out in public and seeing other human beings.

-- Blackouts induced by spending an entire day watching movies back-to-back.

-- A gnawing impatience when you can't watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it coupled with fits of rage when movies are not available for streaming.

I would add :

-- Procrasting by watching streaming videos instead of doing actual work.

We will definitely read more about this in the future - especially on how it's impacting students and their studies.

Television 'breakups' cause some viewers distress: study

A new study reported by PhysOrg.com examined how college-aged television viewers reacted when their favorite shows went off the air or were replaced with reruns as a result of the television writers' strike of 2007-08.

The results revealed the important role television plays in the lives of some viewers – particularly those who use television for companionship and those who feel they have a strong "relationship" with their favorite TV characters.

<>But for those who think that less time spent with the media may be a good thing for some people, the results may be disappointing.

TV viewers basically replaced the time they normally spent watching their favorite shows with other media activities, such as watching TV reruns and using the internet, rather than spending more time with friends or exercising, according to the study.

Read full article.

Report: TV Not That "Social"

TV watching isn't as "social" an experience as you might assume, writes Media Post.

Indeed, just 25% of consumers express an interest in sharing what they're watching with friends, according to a new study from SideReel.

The company, which helps users find content and TV shows online, surveyed 1,800 users and found that, among social apps, only Twitter made a significant appearance in the results, with 29% saying they used Twitter as part of sharing their TV watching socially. "None of the check-in services ... including GetGlue, Miso, Clicker or Foursquare have significant usage among SideReel's TV watchers," according to the report.

SideReel found that 70% of users who do stream video via the Internet to their TV do so using Netflix, whereas the other 30% use other sources.

Overall, "People are mixing new technologies with familiar ones to get a personalized TV experience that includes all of their favorite shows," said SideReel CEO Roman Arzhintar. "For many, traditional TV watching is starting to supplement online watching, rather than the other way around."

Read full article. Image from thenextweb.

Internet Now as Popular as TV, Survey Shows

The average U.S. consumer now spends as much time online as watching television, according to new research by Forrester.

To technophiles, it might seem strange to think of people ever watching TV more than they surfed the Web. But the stat marks a big shift for the country at large; this is the first year in Forrester’s survey that people have reported spending equal amounts of time on the two activities — 13 hours a week.

Read full article.

Nielsen Study. Online Viewers still watch TV

According to a new Nielsen study, eighty-four percent of viewers reported that they are watching the same or more television on their actual TV sets since they started streaming or downloading shows from sites like Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube to watch on their TV set. [via New York Magazine]

In fact, 92 percent of those early adopters subscribe to a pay-TV service, with only 3 percent reporting that they intend to give it up. What's more, 53 percent said they discovered shows by viewing them online and then seeking them out on regularly scheduled TV.

Read related article in The Hollywood Reporter.

Mindset Media Study: You are what you watch

Creative people watch "Mad Men," rebels tune into "Family Guy" and people who think they are superior to others catch "The Office," according to "psychographic ad targeter" Mindset Media, which studied 25,000 viewers across 70 TV shows.

Only a few mainstream shows like "House" and "Bones" didn't have any single personality that stood out statistically either because the audiences are so broad, or the fact that personality isn't a driver of viewership.

[Adage via tvtattle]

Too much screen time bad for kids' behavior

Children who spend more than two hours in front of a computer or TV screen are more likely to suffer psychological difficulties, regardless of how physically active they are, researchers find.

[via News.com]

TV Viewers Watch Different Shows Online

What do Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and Vampire Diaries have in common? They’re all shows that are more popular online than on broadcast TV — that is, if you believe recent data from online video search site SideReel. The New York Times reports.

SideReel yesterday issued a comparison between the top shows based on Nielsen television ratings and those that viewers watch after searching its site, with some surprising results. While shows like American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and NCIS top Nielsen ratings week after week, viewers that watch TV content online generally tune into a different type of fare.

... Some of the differences in ratings could be attributed to the type of content people chose to watch live on TV vs. what they watch online. American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, for instance, have a live, competitive component that most viewers choose to watch during the broadcast rather than a day or two later. Shows like Gossip Girl, meanwhile, generally tend to have a longer shelf life.

Online TV Viewing Trends Defy Nielsen Ratings (Side Reel press release)

The vast majority of Americans watch videos online

Watching videos online has gone mainstream. A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, The State of Online Video, finds that nearly 70 percent of Americans have used the Internet to watch one or more of the following: video clips, TV shows, movies; educational videos.

-- Educational videos, rising in viewership from 22% to 38% of adult internet users

-- Movies or TV show videos, rising in viewership from 16% to 32% of adult internet users

-- Political videos, rising in viewership from 15% to 30% of adult internet users

[via The Christian Science Monitor]

Younger Viewers Watching More TV On The Web

Nearly a quarter of all young adults are viewing more television content online, according to a new study by electronics shopping and review/research company Retrevo. Multichannel News reports.

According to a Retrevo "Pulse Report" of over 1,000 people regarding their TV viewing habits, 23% of people under the age of 25 watch most of their television content online compared with just 8% of people over the age of 25 watching most of their TV shows via the web.

The report also found that men are more likely to view TV on the web than women: 17% of men watch all of their TV content online, while just 9% of women sit in front of their PC's to watch TV shows.

Read full article. Via TV Week.

More Research To Back The Notion That Streaming Kills Piracy

Research conducted by London-based Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research agency Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggests that streaming might in fact be the right antidote against content piracy. TechCrunch reports.

The number of teenagers who download copyrighted content from illegal sources has fallen dramatically over the past few years in favor of streaming.

... Contrary to popular belief, the research also shows that people who download illegal media content are not only driven by the desire to access it for free, but increasingly by the fact that they want to get their hands on the content as soon as it’s available, even if only legally in other countries.

Too much TV 'turns toddlers into bullies'

According to new research, three year-olds who watch more television than average are more likely to become bullies, reports News.scotsman.

A study of more than three thousand mothers found those whose children were most aggressive tended to be those that saw the most programmes – aimed both directly at them or adults.

A contradictory study:

-- TV not to blame for violence, study says

Studies related to toddlers watching TV:

-- Toddlers learn little from TV

-- U.S. babies watching TV, despite warnings

Above Image from the University of Michigan

Report. Hulu, A Threat to TV Networks

In a new report, Laura Martin, Soleil Securities analyst estimates that the online video hub will cost TV networks $920 per viewer in advertising if their audiences are cannibalized by Hulu. And she believes the bulk of viewing on Hulu is indeed taking eyeballs from TV.

[via Mediapost]

New "Internet Meter" will Officially Measure Web TV Audience

Yesterday, Nielsen announced that they will make their new "Internet Meter" available by year's end to measure the online television viewing audience, reports Read Write Web.

The Internet Meter software will be deployed by the end of 2009 to their "People Meter" households - the chosen few whose TV-viewing habits function as the representative sample for measuring a show's success.

This new addition to the ratings game is bound to have a major impact on TV monetization efforts as both networks and advertisers will see, officially, how many viewers have tuned in to watch this "2nd screen."

TV Viewing Moves Online

Nearly one out of four U.S. households watches TV online, up from 20 percent last year, reports The Conference Board and TNS. And Hulu.com is fast becoming the hot site - just behind YouTube.com - for watching TV programs. In fact, the number of households visiting Hulu.com has increased almost fourfold in the last year.

Nearly 80 percent of consumers log on daily for entertainment. In fact, entertainment is cited as one of the most important Internet activities, behind only personal communication and work-related activities.

... News shows are the most popular online programs - watched by about 43 percent of online TV viewers. About 35 percent enjoy sitcoms, comedies and dramas, while 19 percent of online TV viewers indulge in reality shows and 18 percent follow sports. Other forms of online content include previews, user-generated content, additional content from favorite shows, soap operas and advertisements.

[via Reuters. Image from Ypulse]

Nielsen Begins Initiative to Measure Internet Viewing

This week, Nielsen is beginning its controversial move to measure the online behavior of a small subset of its national TV ratings sample. MediaBuyerPlanner reports.

Because the test uses a portion of the same accredited, national TV sample that it uses to generate TV ratings, some researchers are pointing out that it could potentially impact TV ratings results. Nielsen has responded that the impact of measuring both TV and online behavior in a small subset would be minimal, but that they will monitor the situation closely, writes MediaPost.

Read full article.

European internet consumption to overtake TV in 14 months

The internet will overtake broadcast TV as Europe's most consumed form of media for the first time in June 2010 if current growth trends continue, according to Microsoft research. BrandRepublic reports.

... The research shows that for some 18-24 year olds the PC is often the only television screen while for others it can be a second or third screen.

To this generation, TV frequently means video delivered on demand, with one in seven 18-24 year olds now watching no live TV at all.

Research Report: Youngsters Not Abandoning Live TV

A $3.5 billion one year research study into where and how Americans out video, reveals today that the extent to which young people are abandoning live television for new media has been by overestimated. Broadcasting & Cable reports.

According to the Video Consumer Mapping Study, people aged between 18-24 watched only 5.5 minutes of ‘computer video,’ daily compared with 209.9 minutes of live television. DVR playback accounted for 17.2 minutes a day. Across all ages groups, live television still accounted for 309.1 minutes of viewing a day compared to only 14.6 minutes of playback TV and 2.4 minutes daily spent watching online video.

Read full article.

Asian youths can't live without TV, Web: poll

A 2008 survey revealed that most of Asia's youth spends on average 10 hours a day watching TV, on the Internet, reading magazines or listening to the radio. Reuters reports.

... Nearly a third of young Asians said they plan their day around their favorite TV programs, hoping to catch every episode, the Synovate Young Asians survey revealed.

Up to a quarter said they could not live without the Internet, and two-thirds said they must listen to music daily.

Koreans spent over 13 hours a day -- the longest in the region -- consuming some form of media, followed by Hong Kong youth and Singaporeans.

Synovate found that 35 percent of youths had increased their Internet usage in the past year. Close to a quarter had spent more time watching TV while 34 percent said that they had devoted more time to listening to music.

The survey covers 12 countries across Asia, including Vietnam and Japan for the first time.

Major Research Report Expected To Explode TV Viewing Myths

A group of the biggest names in TV research are set to explode some commonly held myths about how consumers watch TV. Their findings about what’s really going on in the world of video consumption will be unveiled next week. The survey is expected to reveal such things as which age groups do the most media multi-tasking; whether younger viewers are really shifting away from traditional TV and how much commercial time viewers are exposed to.
[via Broadcasting & Cable]

The Council for Research Excellence, a cross-industry think tank of top executives from agencies and TV networks, has spent the past year executing a $3.5 million project called the “Video Consumer Mapping Study.” The initiative is described as, “the largest and most significant observational study of media activity ever undertaken.”

I'm hoping this study will include Europe, but it's not likely. If the industry really wants to see how "TV viewing myths have exploded", they should spend their money in Europe and Asia. Where I live, we love US TV series and watch them online from video streaming sites exclusively. French friends who don't speak English download from subfan sites to benefit from the subtitles. We will not be watching them on television when the networks here air them months or years from now. I don't understand why there is no professional coverage of this. No progress reports on copyright agreements with foreign networks. I'm so tired of my own voice.

Related:

-- TF1 Vision: Yesterday on US TV, Today on TF1 Vision - In September 2007, French network TFI1, launched a special section on their website called TFI Vision, which enables French (only) viewers to purchase episodes of US TV series that aired just 24 hours before on American television.

-- Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers - Another prominent subbing community has closed its doors - and has launched a campaign to show the movie industry that they are not thieves, but avid consumers.

-- Anti-Piracy Action Closes Yet More Subfan Sites - Recent months have seen fresh efforts to silence sites that provide fan-created translations of movies and TV shows for their home countries. The latest targets for shutdown - Israel and France.

-- Subfans - Who are these people, who spend hours translating entire episodes for the benefit of others.

-- Subfans: the tools they use - Keskidi is a new tool for subfans - non US TV fans who translate entire episodes for the benefit of others - as well as anyone else who want their videos to reach an international audience.

Piracy Has Become Mainstream, Studies Show

While the entertainment industries push for harsher copyright laws, public opinion steers in the opposite direction. Two recent studies from Canada and Spain found that half of the Internet users use p2p networks to download music, software and films. Less than 5% of the respondents believe that people who download copyrighted content are engaging in criminal behavior. TorrentFrea reports.

In recent years many studies have shown that a large chunk of Internet users share copyrighted files on P2P networks, and this number is rapidly increasing every year. The results of a Canadian study published Friday show that 45% of all those surveyed use file-sharing networks to download movies and music. Also, this behavior is widely accepted since only 3% of the people who participated in the study said that file-sharers should be punished by law.

These results are not unique to Canada either. A few weeks ago a Spanish survey found pretty much the same results (pdf). Of the thousands of Internet users questioned, more than half admitted using file-sharing software regularly. In fact, 28% said they use it every day. Only 1% of the respondents saw downloading copyrighted files as criminal behavior, while 43% said that the development of P2P networks should be promoted.

Alcohol on TV 'prompts drinking'

People are more likely to turn to alcohol while watching TV if they see drinking being portrayed in films or adverts, a study suggests, reports the BBC.

The research, led by a team from Radboud University in the Netherlands, monitored the behaviour of 80 young people while they watched television.

Researchers found those who saw lots of alcohol references drank twice as much as those that did not.

Campaigners said there needed to be more restrictions on advertising.

Watching TV and asthma: is there a link?

Young children who watch more than two hours of television a day are twice as likely to develop asthma as those who watch less, reports a new study. But this doesn't mean that TV watching actually causes asthma. Instead, researchers say watching a lot of TV could indicate a less active lifestyle, which may make asthma more likely.

[via The Guardian]

Americans watch yet more TV, Nielsen reports

Americans watched more television than ever in the fourth quarter, The Nielsen Co. reported Monday, even though the Internet is providing another way to watch. The Seattle Times reports.

The average American older than 2 years watched television for 151 hours per month, Nielsen said.

The average user of Internet video spent two hours and 53 minutes on that per month, Nielsen said.

This last figure is so far off from my personal experience and how everyone around me watches TV online. Where I live (Switzerland) it's more like two hours and 53 minutes a day, not a month. When will someone take an interest in how people watch TV online outside of the US? It's obviously much more popular. Video sharing sites stream the latest episodes of the latest series - not yet available on our TV networks. Sorry if you've heard this before, but official content is not available to us.

Full TV Episodes Viewed Online Doubles Since '06

According to Information Week, eighty-seven percent of Internet streamers say they go online to watch current episodes that they missed.

About twice as many Internet users watch entire television programs online than in 2006, according to a recent report.

Knowledge Networks, a research, marketing, and consulting firm, found that one in five Internet users between the ages of 13 and 54 watch full TV episodes online. Two-thirds of them said they expect to their favorite shows to be available for viewing on the device of their choice, according to an annual report released last week by Knowledge Networks.

The third annual report, "How People Use TV's Web Connections," also showed that use of third-party hosting sites like Hulu has doubled since 2007, from 14% of Internet streamers ages 13 to 54 to 28%, but the networks' own Web sites are still the most popular source of network content, Knowledge Networks reported.

Read full article.

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Study links TV and depressio

The amount of time teenagers watch television increases their risk of becoming depressed as adults, researchers find, reports The LA Times.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School looked at the media habits of 4,142 healthy adolescents and calculated that each additional hour of TV watched per day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8%.

Other forms of media, such as playing computer games and watching videos, didn't affect the risk of depression, according to the study published today in the Archives of General Psychology, titled "Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood".

The results don't prove that TV viewing itself causes depression, said Dr. Brian Primack of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Research on Health Care, who led the study. "It could be argued that people with the predilection for later development of depression also happen to have a predilection for watching lots of TV," he said.

But the circumstantial evidence pointing to TV as the culprit is strong, the study found.

Brits watch a day's worth of TV a week

Britain is a nation of telly addicts, according to a new report by TV marketing body Thinkbox. TechRadar reports.

The report, based on figures taken from research body Barb, says the average TV viewer in the UK clocked up a horrifying 26 hours' worth of TV watching a week over the last year.

... Thinkbox also found that online TV viewing was not cannibalising broadcast TV figures as first expected, with 78 per cent of people using IPTV as a means to catch up on shows missed on traditional broadcast telly.

Tess Alps, Chief Executive of Thinkbox, said: "The broadcast audience may not always be watching the same programme at the same time as it did when there were a handful of channels... but viewers haven't gone anywhere."

Internet generation leave parents behind

Children are spending increasing amounts of their lives in front of televisions, computers and games consoles, cramming in nearly six hours of screen time a day, according to research, reports The Guardian.

The online activity is building barriers between parents and children, the authors say, with a third of young people insisting they cannot live without their computer.

Screen time has become so pervasive in the daily lives of five- to 16-year-olds that they are now skilled managers of their free time, juggling technology to fit in on average six hours of TV, playing games and surfing the net, it suggests.

... The report by ChildWise is based on an annual survey, now into its 15th year, of 1,800 children at 92 schools across the country.

Read full article. Image from LSD Teen Help.

More Online Than TV Viewing

Consumers now spend more time with online media online than they do watching television, say researchers at the Yankee Group. Of course, since they appear to be multitasking, the level of engagement would seem to be dropping as well. IPTV reports.

In fact, 56 percent of television viewers are online, browsing the Web or sending e-mail while "watching" television, Yankee Group researchers say.

Professionally-produced content remains the constant across digital platforms ranging from television, Internet video, mobile video to portable video. Users are consuming in more personalized ways, but most of what they consume consists of movies, clips of television shows, movie trailers and music videos.

Web Video Users Are Day Clickers

According to MediaWeek, there’s more evidence to support the theory that daytime is the Internet’s prime time, at least when it comes to video, based on a new report issued by Nielsen Online.

During the traditional work week—i.e. Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.--65 percent of online video viewers streamed at least one piece of content in October, versus 51 percent of viewers who did so on weekends from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., according to Nielsen Online’s October VideoCensus report.

That heavy concentration of at-work viewers is likely bolstered by the fact that 96 percent of those folks have access to broadband connections, found Nielsen.

Read full article.

Yearning for YouTube

Walk into the library on any given afternoon and about half of the computers you see are on YouTube. Most students find it hard to imagine life without YouTube or other online video sources. SMUdailycampus.com reports.

SMU Temerlin Advertising Institute students Anna Lee Doughtie, Kat Farmer and Lizzie Harris conducted research to find out what would happen if students deprived themselves of online video sources for two weeks.

... Seven SMU students who agreed to participate were self-described "heavy users" of online video, with half saying they watch a minimum of 30 minutes per average day. From Oct. 24 through Nov. 7, students agreed to avoid such sites as YouTube.com, Sidereel.com, iTUNES video, Surfthechannel.com, Yahoo video and official broadcast network Web sites.

One week into the study, more than half of the participants said they had "accidentally" been exposed to some form of online videos, typically YouTube.

It was virtually impossible for some participants to completely avoid online video content.

For those who have come to rely on online "how-to" videos rather than instructional books or manuals, two weeks without YouTube demonstrations proved challenging.

Students generally struggled with going "cold turkey" with online videos. Some felt disconnected from their favorite television shows because they would typically watch them online, whereas others simply increased the time spent watching the television set.

... In a picture collage created to describe the effects of online video deprivation, one participant selected a picture of a man straining to see through a tiny hole. "I felt sight-restricted, because I couldn't see what was going on," he said.

11% of Young Adults Watch TV Online Weekly

18-to-34s who watch TV online at least once a week spend an extra hour with media every day, compared to their same-age counterparts, says new Knowledge Networks data, reports Market Watch.

These young adults spend 80% more time online than the general 18-to-34 population, and 16% more time (about 1.25 hours per day) with media generally; they are also much more likely to belong to and use social networks.

Online video chips away at TV

More evidence that online video is cannibalizing television consumption is due Monday, courtesy of an IBM study. Plus, online viewers don't mind the commercials too much. The Hollywod Reporter reports.

After polling 2,800 people in six countries, IBM says 76% have viewed video online and 45% do so regularly. Of those who have watched online video, 15% say that as a result they watch "slightly less" TV, while 36% said they watch "significantly less" TV.

Unhappy people watch TV, happy people read/socialize, says study

A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research.Physorg.com reports.

Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time-use studies and a continuing series of social attitude surveys, the Maryland researchers report that spending time watching television may contribute to viewers' happiness in the moment, with less positive effects in the long run.

Read full article.

One-Third of Web Users Watch TV While Surfing

Nearly 31% of people who went online at home in October were also watching television simultaneously, demonstrating that web surfing and TV watching are complementary behaviors, according to research from The Nielsen TV/Internet Convergence Panel. [via Marketing Vox]

With our Convergence Panel we can now, for the first time, observe what could only be guessed at before - how television viewing and internet usage interact and affect each other, said Howard Shimmel, SVP, client insights, The Nielsen Company. It is too early to draw any firm conclusions about behavior but the early trends seem to indicate that online usage is complementing, not substituting for, traditional television viewing.

What about people who watch TV online in one window, while surfing from another window? That's what I do and I'm not alone.

Age trumps technology in TV trends

TV and video market growth is limited more by the age of consumers than by technological limitations, according to a new report by ABI Research titled Age is a Primary Factor in How Americans Consume Video Entertainment.

Internet downloads are mostly popular with those under 30, who also are four times more likely to have watched video on their cellphone than those in their 50s, the report says.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

Acne, ADHD sufferers most likely to watch tv online!

This is rich! A Manhattan Research survey found that ane and adult ADHD sufferers are the condition groups most likely to watch their TV on the Internet. [via Medical Marketing Media]

After acne and adult ADHD sufferers were those with eczema, allergies and bipolar disorder.

"The study found that as less than half of US adults reporting doing all their TV viewing the old-fashioned way, through TV sets, some condition groups are more predisposed to online TV viewing.

The study suggests that companies marketing products for those ailments now know where they can reach their intended audience.

Software in Cellphones Measures Customers' Exposure to Marketing

A small media research company called Integrated Media Measurement (im<>mi) is offering new technology that measures consumers' exposure to the audio in ads on television, radio, computers, mobile phones, DVDs and inside a movie theatre -- using a consumer's cellphone. The WSJ reports.

...im<>mi embeds its software into the cellphones of the company's 4,900 panelists. The software picks up audio from an ad or a TV show and converts it into its own digital code that is then uploaded into an im<>mi database, which includes codes for media content such as TV shows, commercials, movies and songs.

im<>mi's database then figures out what the cellphone was exposed to by matching the code. Cellphone conversations and background noise are filtered out by the software, im<>mi says, since there is no "match" in the im<>midatabase.

Read full article.

Movie, TV viewing shifting online: study

Couch potatoes may be a thing of the past as a study has found the number of people watching video on their computers has doubled over the past year. ABC News reports.

"The US study, by ABI Research, found growing numbers of younger viewers are enjoying movies and television shows online.

The number of US consumers watching video streamed through a browser has soared over the past year, from 32 per cent a year ago to 63 per cent today.

ABI Research says growth in consumption of online video is due to a number of factors, including an increase in the amount of rich content available and more broadband connections."

A New View On TV

It didn't take long after America started tuning in to television that people started to worry about what it was doing to children.

"... In 1977 a panel appointed by the College Entrance Examination Board suggested television bore some blame for the drop in SAT scores. Indeed, the decline began in the mid-1960s, just as the first students heavily exposed to TV took their exams.

"But University of Chicago Graduate School of Business economists Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro aren't sure that TV has been all that bad for kids. In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics this year, they presented a series of analyses that showed that the advent of television might actually have had a positive effect on children's cognitive ability."

Read full article in the WSJ.

20% of Primetime Television Now Watched Online

Online video consumption has been on the rise for a while, and now Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) is releasing demographic and behavioral data to show the details of the trend. Search Engine Watch reports.

"20% of primetime television programming is now viewed online.

The audience is comprised of 55% female and 45% male.

Households earning $80,000 a year or more are 56% more likely to watch a network show online. Those earning $40,000 a year or less are 75% more likely to watch a primetime show live.

The largest segment of online television viewers are white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25-44."