TV losing the war for attention?

TV is now better value than it has been for ages. The credit crunch means lower demand is driving prices down and lots of data shows that people are watching as much TV as ever - despite the amount of time being spent with digital media.
The new Ofcom report on the International Communications Market has some interesting facts that help explain this. Backing up our anecdotal findings we see that 74% of UK Internet Users surf whilst they watch TV - and 28% do it most times.

Comments

[andrew pascoe]

Simon, I'll have to track down the source they used, but at Thinkbox's Televisionaries presentations yesterday, one of the pop quiz questions was about simultaneous TV/internet usage.

The figure they gave was 3% of all people do both simultaenously (obviusly its 3% of a bigger base as its total people, not interenet users, but the difference is still huge).

(Caveat of course is it was a day presented by the trade body for commercial TV, hence why I'm keen to find the source of their 3% to get the right perspective on it - also because it was all verbal, I want to make sure I definitely got it all right.)

[simon andrews]

Very Interesting - I'd love to hear where that figure comes from.

[Simon]

Slides 143-145 on the Ofcom CMR report - http://www.slideshare.net/comment.ofcom/ofcom-uk-cmr-2008-charts-551767 - contain some simultaneous usage figures from earlier in the year. The figures are smaller, though one would expect them to grow over time...

Simon

[simon andrews]

That data is based on all who watch TV - the new data is of all who use the internet. I think we all know that lots of TV is more likely to be seen than watched these days.

[andrew pascoe]

A new report from Nielsen (on US audiences) has the following quote in the release accompanying the report (but I cant see the actual stats within the rest of the report, and dont have access to the full report)

' “TV use is at an all-time high, yet people are also using the Internet more often – 31% of which is happening simultaneously.” '

from here: http://www.nielsen.com/media/2008/pr_081124.html

[Chris]

Very interesting. Does this factor in sites like hulu and fancast, where you are technically watching tv shows, although they are on the internet. There is ad revenue tied to them, so essentially it is the same thing--even though very different.