What Strike? Viewers Stick With OldTeeVee
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A new survey from marketing services firm Carat revealed that a mere 5 percent of TV watchers will abandon their favorite TV shows when those shows return to air. A quick bit of math (and a tip of the hat to Silicon Alley Insider), and that means a whopping 95 percent of TV watchers are ready to come back to their living rooms to roost. No strike harm, no foul.
There’s one stat the web video industry can cling to: Of those 5 percent not returning to their favorite oldteevee programming, 11 percent said they’ll watch TV shows online.
So is there anything those in web video could have done to better take eyeballs away from TV? For an industry that prides itself on immediacy and nimbleness, new media studios had four months to pillage wayward television watchers, and couldn’t capitalize. Is web video over before it began? It could get worse before it gets better for online video as this will be a big year for oldteeve. Respondents to the Carat survey said they are excited about events like the riveting presidential election, upcoming Olympics, and the American Idol finale.
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All this survey proves is that people like to watch TV from thier couch and big screen and not on a computer monitor .
Many early adopters are connecting their TVs up to a computer and watching shows from the couch with wireless mice and keyboards.
Some smart companies are noticing this trend and creating video sites that work with the Wii browser for example .I hope others in the space notice this trend and at least offer a option for a UI optimized for TVs and a On Screen Keyboard .
This survey doesn’t ask very good questions. Why on earth would anybody abandon their FAVORITE show? Aren’t people more likely to abandon shows that aren’t their favorite? What about new shows that are starting up? For example: I’d definitely watch “Journeyman” if it was coming back but since it’s not, will I watch it’s replacement? Probably not.
The second part concentrates on live event coverage which TV will continue to be very good at. The Olympics and the election are also special events that don’t happen every year. Of course people are going to watch them. A lot of people will probably watch the next super bowl too. I’m not sure that tells us anything about any TV watching trends though.
The observation that consumers will stick with old TV is a little lame. We love our couch and HDTV. That will never change. It is also silly to suggest that the new media missed an opportunity to capitalize on web distribution in the FOUR months of the writers strike. No consumer trend has ever been changed in four months.
One of the key points in the survey that does hold water is where it spells out “…the growing online component has become a complimentary platform, not only as a convenience for the viewer but also as an advertising opportunity for our clients.” I completely agree, and virtually all consumer trends support this premise.