Remember last week, when CBS announced that its YouTube presence had lifted its audience figures? Letterman was up five percent in the month since they’d started posting excerpts on the service.
Well, today, the BBC publishes research that suggests the contrary:
Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result.
And online and mobile viewing is rising – three quarters of users said they now watched more than they did a year ago.
But online video viewers are still in the minority, with just 9% of the population saying they do it regularly.
Another 13% said they watched occasionally, while a further 10% said they expected to start in the coming year.
So what does that mean? Is internet video good for TV viewing figures, like CBS said, or bad, like the BBC says?
In part, the answer may lie in the methodology employed. Asking people what they do does not return the same results as measuring what they really do. People try to please researchers, and they represent themselves as the person they want to be. They might also not really know where their time goes.
There’s another way of reconciling the results. It also might mean that our television viewing is becoming more filtered. Internet fans are watching less, but they are watching more of the shows that create a buzz on the net. It’s the long tail of television that’s suffering not the fat head of the Simpsons, Family Guy, the Daily Show and the other top YouTube favourites.
Elsewhere: Michael Urlocker discusses how the broadcast business might respond to this disruption. Antony Mayfield thinks the trend will continue.
I think the difference between the two is that CBS are looking at using online video as a marketing/PR tool for a specific show – and in that context what they’re saying is quite plausible.
The BBC study on the other hand looks at general trends at an aggregate level – and shows a general substitution trend from broadcast TV to online video, which is again plausible, and compatible with the CBS findings.
A few years down the track the distinction between broadcast TV and online video will be less anyway, as more content is consumed online on demand, whether it’s shared video or video from “traditional” broadcasters.
cheers,
sw
CBS is actually publishing excerpts from a wide variety of shows.
But your broader point is correct. We’re not far from internet TV right now.
How the US watches TV differently from the UK…
A BBC / ICM poll showed yesterday that online video was eroding television’s market share. The research found that nearly half (43%) of the 2,000-odd people questioned who watched video online admitted they watched less TV as a result. You…
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