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.

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."

Web video slowly creeps up on TV in Europe

More than one in four Europeans regularly watches online video on sites such as Google's YouTube but the medium has a long way to go to catch up with regular TV, according to Internet research firm Jupiter. Reuters reports.

"In a report released on Thursday, Jupiter said 28 percent of Europeans watched online video at least once a month, mainly short clips but also full-length video via services like the BBC iPlayer or France's M6 Replay.

Although time spent by Europeans watching online video rose 50 percent from 2006 to 2007, it still accounted for just 0.9 hours per week of viewing on average last year, compared with 13.2 hours spent watching television.

Jupiter warned traditional broadcasters to find ways to deliver programes to their audience online or risk losing them to pirate sites, despite the fact that generating revenue through online video ads is still in early development."

Survey finds most Americans think in-store movie renting is fading out

A recent survey conducted by CinemaNow (read: your skeptic hat should now be firmly in place) suggests that 87% of Americans surveyed agreed that "renting DVDs at the video store or through mail service will become a thing of the past," and 94% of those same folks reportedly felt that movie downloads were just "better for the environment."

[via engadgetHD]

Online viewing won’t kill TV - CBS

Not hugely surprising, but CBS commissioned a study showing that watching full-length shows online won’t destroy television viewership, and it will attract a younger audience.

[via Reuters Blogs]

Canadians skirt law to watch TV on the web

Canadians are turning on, tuning in and watching traditional TV shows on the Internet often using underground ways to access American programming, says a new study by Toronto-based Two Solitudes Consulting. Times and Transcript reports.

"There's less online content available from Canadian broadcasters than is available from U.S. broadcasters, study author Alan Sawyer said.

The lack of available content is resulting in Canadians using underground activity to get the TV shows they want to see online, he said.

"A very important thing to realize is that every television program that is broadcast is available in most cases in illegal peer-to-peer broadcasting," said Sawyer.

... The study is called Changing Channels: Alternative Distribution of Television Content, and was done for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)."

Study: TV still the viewing workhorse

Watching online streams isn't going to replace the living room TV set anytime soon: According to a study released Monday by the Nielsen and the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, 94% of US adults who subscribe to a cable or satellite service prefer to watch programming on their traditional sets rather than online.

[via The Hollywood Reporter. Read also WebPro News]

Watching TV on Web may replace old-school cable

V e r b a t i m

"If you think about it, (giving up your cable company) is a little bit like cutting the cord. With a phone, two to three years ago, it was completely insane to say that you don't really need a home phone. -- Aniya Zaozerskaya, an analyst at Compete Inc., a Boston Web analytics firm.

[via The Boston Globe]

Tots and Teens Dig the NewTeeVee

According to new Nielsen data, the next generation of video watchers is spending even more time with online video at home than the current crop of adults do. NewTeeVee reports.

Plasma TVs, gaming consoles guzzle electricity: study

Plasma television sets consume he most power out of a list of 16 electronic devices tested by by Choice.com.au, including laptops, stereo systems and DVD players. Reuters reports.

"... The plasma TV set consumes over four times more power than a traditional analogue set. The average desktop computer was third on the list."

The report advised consumers to switch off their electronic devices at the source, rather than just from the remote control, which puts them on power-consuming stand-by mode. "This saves on money, not to mention carbon emissions," it added."

Hey! Nielsen Brings Buzz to Ratings

Hey! Nielsen is a place for TV fans to voice opinions about TV programming that opened last September.

Nielsen's intent is to figure out how to incorporate the feedback into its ratings:

"Using data from real users, Hey! Nielsen generates a Hey! Nielsen score -- a real-time indicator of a topic's impact, influence, and value. As users submit feedback, the score is created from a number of factors such as user response, blog buzz, and news coverage, as well as raw data from our sister sites Billboard.com, HollywoodReporter.com, and BlogPulse.com."

[via MIT Adverblog]

BitTorrent sees big growth, LimeWire still #1

BitTorrent is the hottest thing in P2P right now—a just-released study shows 19.5 percent growth in BitTorrent use during a 12-month period ending in September 2007. LimeWire is still the most popular P2P app, however.

[via ars technica]

Report: Viewers want Web with DVD

Customers want Web-enabled features on their next DVD player, according to a new study by the Diffusion Group, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

"By contrast with PCs and game consoles, the DVD platform is seen as inexpensive, reliable and very simple to use.

"Adding Internet support and a few compelling Web-enabled features into a mainstream living room platform like the DVD player will increase the uptake of media networking in general and particularly, TV-based Web video consumption," TDG president and report author Michael Greeson said.

TV content creators get good news

A new survey of TV viewers worldwide reveals ominous trends for networks but -- paradoxically -- encouraging news for content creators such as producers, directors and writers.

Consulting firm Accenture, which published the survey Monday, found that viewers are very loyal to their favorite shows, much more so than to the branded networks that provide them.

[via Variety]

Study: Pirated Web Video Peaks 12-18 Hours After Broadcast

Unauthorized viewing of popular TV shows on video-sharing Web sites like YouTube peaks between 12 and 18 hours after an episode is broadcast, according to a study conducted by Akamai Technologies and content-identification service provider Vobile. [via MultiChannel News]

"The companies tracked one broadcaster’s primetime show—which they declined to identify—over a 30-day period starting the second week of January.

They found that while illegal versions of the show became available online within minutes of broadcast, consumption was relatively low in the first 12 hours. Usage spiked the morning following broadcast and grew larger throughout the day.

Within 72 hours, unauthorized versions eroded the audience for the content owner’s own TV episode distributed online almost 20%, according to Akamai and Vobile."

Bedroom TV leads to children being stupider and less healthy

Teenagers with a bedroom television tend to have poorer diet and exercise habits and lower grades in school than those without one, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

[Reuters via Tech DIgest]

70% of UK TV audience goes online while viewing

According to a survey commissioned by video search service, Blinkx, almost 70% of adults in Britain go onto the internet while watching television. IPTV Watch reports.

"Younger viewers are particularly fond of going online while watching TV - over 20% of 16-24 year olds said this was something they always did.

The survey found that 30% of those going online while watching television did so to search for products or services featured in the programme they were watching, while 27% searched for information on advertised products.

Blinkx also found that it is becoming increasing popular to watch TV programming online. Over 50% of British adults with access to the internet watch programming online. One in five watch full-length television shows, movies or sporting events online."

Image from TechCrunch

Strike didn't hurt TV usage, study finds

According to a new study, strike-era viewers managed to increase the amount of time spent watching DVDs, playing video games and surfing the Internet while continuing to watch as much television programming as before.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

TV Ownership May Be Good for Well-Being

In most countries the world over, Gallup data show that people who have televisions in their homes report greater well-being than do those who do not have televisions in their homes.

... The beneficial effects of owning a TV hold up even after taking into account many of the desirable things that often go hand in hand with TV ownership, including wealth and access to electricity and running water. Gallup noted that “even when comparing people with identical incomes, TV owners still enjoy higher levels of well-being and optimism.”

[via Adfreak]

Study: Kids Multitask While Watching TV

A new study on social networking by Greenwald Associates reveals that kids are no longer glued to the television. Now, while the tube is on, many kids are also splitting their attention between the TV and the Internet.

The report showed that 64 percent of kids aged nine to 17 go online while watching TV. Of those, 73 percent say they're engaged in active multi-tasking.

[Search Engine Watch via NewTeeVee]

Online TV contents drive viewers back to television

According to Disney-ABC co-chair Ann Sweeney, the content TV networks put online actually drive viewers back to television. And the viewers who watch TV programming via the Internet and are then driven into or back into TV are younger that the average TV network viewer and pay more attention to advertising.

Viewers on the ABC.com video player--during the first 18 weeks of the current TV season--watched more than 124 million episodes, a 178 percent uptick over the same period last season.

In addition, she says that its streaming video users remember ads 87 % of the time.

[via Ibinews]