The publication of the third quarter of Nielsen’s 3 screen report provides a perfect ‘sit back and ponder’ moment for 2009, as we are on the verge of shifting into 2010.
The trends are all what you’d expect them to be ‘ we are watching slightly less traditional TV, a lot more video online and slightly more on handsets.
But as a percentage of all video watched, the TV, according to Nielsen is dramatically dominant with 99% of all video watched there. Here at Faultline we cannot quite agree that this is likely, but we feel that in principle there are some ingredients missing from internet and mobile TV that need to be ‘created’ before they become mainstream.
There are huge data capture issues in Nielsen’s way here, and asking people if they watched a one hour long program on TV, when they actually watched it on a DVR in around 32 minutes with no adverts, but felt like they ‘shouldn’t’ say that, is just one example of how people might skew the numbers. Asking how much video they watch online might also come up against at least two good reasons to de-emphasize the true numbers ‘ the fact that viewers watch a lot of video at work, when they should be working and the fact that people will tend to discount the number of hours they spend watching online pornography or pirated works or frivolous YouTube clips. So we have to place a large proviso on these numbers which Nielsen does a good job collecting, but we’d simply expect it to be somewhat inaccurate, and given that Nielsen gets most of its money from audience measurement in the broadcast industries, it may err on the side of telling broadcast what it wants to hear.
If Nielsen consistently spread doom and gloom about the future of broadcast, its customers would look for a second opinion and that would let rivals into its cozy monopoly (after all denial is a key stage in the acceptance chain – anger, anxiety, bargaining, denial, depression, grief, etc’ and broadcasters want to deny what’s happening to them)
First a bland look at the top line figures. In the US, Nielsen says, people watch 129 hours of TV, conduct 27 hours of internet browsing, and view 3 hrs of mobile video, each month. It then largely contradicts these figures by saying that each week US citizens watch over 31 hours of TV, 31 minutes playing back a DVR, 22 minutes watching online video, and 3 minutes watching mobile video. We won’t even attempt to reconcile these two sets of numbers (3 minutes of mobile video a week might come up to 14 minutes each month ‘ not 3 hours), but taking either set implies a something close to four 40 hours working weeks, watching video and browsing the internet. It seems an awful lot, and given that the US prides itself on the productivity of its workforce, is implausible.
For an adult in any given working week, it’s likely he or she spend at least 37.5 hours working, 10 hours traveling to and from work, at least 49 hours asleep, into each week’s 168 hours. If TV takes up over 31 hours, that leaves just 40 hours left to fit in shopping, socializing (internet or face to face), exercise, cooking, eating, walking, kissing, washing, hobbies, playing games, paying our bills and speaking to people on the phone or messing about in any other way. It strikes us that these activities are being compressed fast. And watching some form of video, according to Nielsen, seems to have gone up by around 1 hour per month per person since last year, although it is down seasonally. That means those activities have all lost an hour between them? Or have they?
No wonder Blockbuster is going quietly broke. Who has the time to go to mall to get a DVD or a game, with so little time left each day to view or play it? These numbers are just not consistent with a country where in one quarter, back in 2004, 10% of male 18 to 35 TV viewing hours disappeared in a single quarter, due to competing interests (a Nielsen figure). The direction seems to be the wrong way, but actually consider this. If you can do two things at once, suddenly, you’ve got twice as much time.
What’s happening here is ALL about saving time, and we have a majorly compressed society, with pressure on time coming from every angle. We need more qualifications to get ahead, so we have to study; we need to compartmentalize our social lives not into meeting people, but into online encounters; we have to catch up our TV habits by watching programming online, because we just HAVE to keep pace with at least four major TV series; we use the DVR to compress our viewing day; we would watch TV on the way to work on our handsets if only we could, except that even if we’re not driving (which would make it dangerous) we can’t get access to the program right now while we’re in the car or on the train. (Broadcast mobile TV might fix that one).
The main outcome is that increasingly we are trying to do at least two things at once. We watch the TV or listen to music while we work out; we do email while travelling on the commuter train; we listen to an ebook or the radio while driving; we watch TV and look things up on the internet (and maybe do our homework as well); we work while eating; we resent every minute that we give up to listen to advertising, because our lives are a time compressed mess. The answer of course is Life-Shifting.
We all know what time shifted TV is. We all know what place-shifted viewing is, but we are undergoing multiple dramatic changes in our lives and it is reflected in these Nielsen numbers, if only we understand how to look for it.
We are now shifting the moments when work is being carried out, when fun is being missed and when traveling is dull, and mixing them with at least one media experience, sometimes two. Homework is bearable only when we listen to music; work is only bearable when we have a news widget or an IM conversation going or an RSS feed pop up on our browser to break the monotony. Running is better if we speak to someone or listen to something, driving more fun if we speak on the phone; being a passenger preferable while we watch TV; doing the commute while we catch up on boring email. For Chrissakes, I even looked at my email halfway through writing this piece, as a reward for getting over the bulk of it. Our next stop is to shifting from doing two things at once, to doing three.
The more we do and the more complex it is, the more inexorable the boredom surrounding the breaks in our lives becomes. If you stop doing one thing to do nothing, it is a small change. If you go from three to none, it leaves a void.
Can we also shift those experiences when we see something beautiful, like watching a heron take flight, stop and get out of the car, walk 100 meters from the road and just breathe in the air, taking in beauty and getting in touch with ourselves. Of course we can, because someone just does all that, captures it in their phone, sends you an MMS or email, and you break from your meeting for one second to look at your screen, and you can almost smell the new mown grass, or the reeds at the water’s edge. You take only a moment, but go back to your meeting refreshed. You just saved an hours driving and 30 minutes of standing and staring. You just time-compressed beauty. It’s definitively second rate, but it helps us survive.
Our lives break into tiny fragments and we have to get enough of each activity (a bit like getting each daily vitamin intake right) to survive. We need sleep, achievement, contact with others, progress, laughter, perspective, affection, flavors, reflection and insight, to name but a few of those all too human vitamins.
So think of YouTube not as a TV replacement, but as funny-moment shifting, so that when others capture a funny moment in one of their oh so increasingly precious real life moments, it can be extended and shared and then no-one else has to spend the time finding or filming something so humorous. They simply tap into someone else’s.
To all Faultline readers out there, you should always consider all of this and the effect on hyper-boredom (boredom shifting?) which your product is going to have. If it has no effect, and does not reduce boredom, then it’s will not take off like a rocket.
This ‘Alice through the internet’ vicarious life-living, leads to a more sedentary time, and this of course leads to Shape shifting. Let’s not laugh that one off. The pressure of having too many things to fit into your life, including that 31 hours a week or more of TV watching, leads to less ‘doing’ and more sitting about. It is not unconnected to the rise in obesity across the planet, focused almost entirely where TV is watched three hours a day or more.
Another major shift is in the way we work. If you are building a bridge or working on a house, you have to be there at the place of work. But as Western society gets more and more ‘information workers,’ we end up with people spending at least one extra day working at home, where more and more of these fragmented pieces of our lives can fit into that day ‘ taking your daughter to school, walking the dog, taking in the Christmas gifts from the Amazon delivery man, speaking to your college mates on IM, watching a little YouTube after each chapter is complete in the report you are writing, and all the while keeping iTunes or the TV on in the background.
What Nielsen is seeing is this process and the results must be interpreted within that process. We are not watching more TV as a primary activity, but as soon as we can do two things at once, we find that there is more room for TV viewing, so it appears to go up.
It’s not only that people are still watching TV, and watching it more, but the entire set up of personal emotions and life experiences are falling more and more into being time-shared. We can watch more TV, month to month right now, as we get better at doing more and more things at once, as we get closer to feeling self-actualized, based on less time away from the home and less physical effort.
People can now watch TV where they used to only listen to music or browse the web. Because they are getting better at doing two or three things at once.
We should call it Crossing the boredom chasm, and as in the original ‘Crossing the Chasm,’ the technology book by Geoffrey Moore, it should become a major consideration in any business trying to launch into the Faultline area of digital media. Does your product pass the boredom reduction test?
Another of the things holding up TV usage for Nielsen and all its customers, is that it fulfills two major purposes that need to be replaced before it can dwindle and fall into disrepair ‘ it provides a passive activity, something to do when you aren’t sure what you want to do, or when you want to do nothing, and it also provides a base camp from which to explore TV excellence.
You cannot know that it is worth setting the DVR to record every episode of 24 if you haven’t watched the pilot; you can’t find that you really need to get the DVD of Black Books (a quirky UK comedy) or Curb Your Enthusiasm, unless you browse through 50 channels and finally settle on a program to sample and gradually learn to love it.
Think how much money a company will be worth if it can replace either of these functions. Well perhaps YouTube is part of the way there in that it is something to do when you are at work when you are bored and not busy on something ‘ watching TV would not work there because it takes up too much extended attention. Perhaps the social networks take up the other role eventually, of recommending what it is that you want to watch, instead of zapping through channels, sampling.
There are visual clues right now in zapping ‘ when we spend 2 seconds or less on each channel or on each EPG component, we are looking for either visual quality (the high production values of quality TV) or a genre that we are ‘in the mood’ for. That’s why children don’t find films like ‘Close encounters of the Third Kind,’ or ‘Black Beauty,’ because they are dated, and poorly made visually by today’s standards, and have to be guided to them by adults, in order to enjoy them. The find High School Musical Two instead.
On a social network other people can provide the stimulus to try out a program for a little longer, to give it a chance. At IBC last year we saw at least 15 recommendation systems for TV, but these need to grow out of social networks and become integrated with them, not emerge out of TV. All of which is why we are not there yet. Social Networks are at the studio equivalent of silent movies in their development, and will extend and envelope other dimensions, and TV viewing is one of these. Social Networks shift the process of making friends to the internet, which also saves time and let’s you do it while you are doing other things. More shifting, more doing two things at once.
So we have traveled a long way from Nielsen’s numbers and might just as well have simply embarked on a travelogue of digital media to see out the year. Except that it serves to show that the important numbers are not how slowly TV is supposedly shrinking, but how fast other activities are growing.
Nielsen also revealed that 57% of Americans with home Internet access,
use the TV and Internet simultaneously, at least once a month. It shows the double activity trend.
Nielsen also said that in the first few weeks of the September TV season there was a big surge in time-shifting with viewers sampling the new
season TV programming with their DVRs. Which shows that the DVR has a role in this ‘sampling’ process. We think of the DVR as insurance against boredom, you may never watch what you have recorded, but it’s there if you have a bout of acute boredom and there’s nothing which is just right on 300 channels of TV.
Nielsen also points out that social networks are becoming a popular source for online video. Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98% from October 2008 to October 2009. Now that’s interesting and it shows the natural affinity that video has for social recommendation. We’ve always known this intuitively, but now it’s a fact.
The embedding of videos into existing social networks only strengthens the viral nature of online video. As a sign of the increased maturity of both the social media and video markets, much of the growth in video consumption within social media is coming from older demographics, with the 35 to 49 year old segment increasing their viewing time by 37% and the 65+ segment increasing their viewing 47% year over year, says the report.
Once video sharing and recommendation has traveled up and down the age groups and is accepted practice, perhaps we can survive with less zapping and more social contact. What’s interesting is the fact that right now someone has to browse the TV channels and find something interesting BEFORE they can recommend it. If that step in the chain could be eliminated, and perhaps recommendation engines could be seeded initially on social networks, and programming can be streamed from the recommendation point to your TV, in HD, then suddenly we shift to a new paradigm. We’re not far from that all being possible.
Right now no-one can see what might replace the older zapping, 300 channel paradigm, simply because (as Nielsen suggests) it seems robust in the face of change. But actually very little has to change before online viewing takes over as a way of browsing, opting for something to do when you having nothing else to do, and finding new video experiences.
And if internet media makes that leap then broadcast TV hits a historical roadblock, which potentially wipes it out.