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TV and the internet
A FEW years ago, some media executives feared (and many bloggers gloated) that
people were abandoning television for the internet. That hasn t happened. The
most rigorous studies show that television-watching has not declined if
anything, it has increased. Couch potatoes are learning to multi-task, watching
TV while tapping away at their laptops or smartphones. But how much do they
multi-task, and what websites do they visit? New numbers from Nielsen, a firm
that tracks all sorts of old- and new-media consumption, provide some answers.
The most striking thing is that multi-tasking is still fairly rare. During this
year s Academy Awards, only 11.6% of viewers used the fixed web at some point
(Nielsen measures simultaneous TV-computer use but not yet TV-mobile use).
Those who went online during the programme were connected to the internet for
just over 30 minutes, or about 15% of the show s duration. The pattern was
similar during the Superbowl. Even during the Grammys, a pop awards ceremony
that attracts young viewers, people who went online only did so for about 20%
of the programme s length.
Television is an extraordinarily dominant, absorbing medium that sucks up far
more time than the internet. When it is good, and even when it isn t all that
good (the Academy Awards, for example) it shoulders everything else aside. In
December 2009, Nielsen estimated that 34% of internet users had the television
on while surfing the net. But when tuning in for a programme,
television-watchers used the internet only about 3% of the time. This dominance
goes a long way to explaining why television has so far resisted the disruptive
effect of technology.
And what do people do online while they are watching television? Most of all,
they mess around on Facebook. According to Nielsen, Facebook was the most
popular website during the Superbowl, the Grammys and the Academy Awards
(normally Google is the most popular). AOL.com also got more attention than it
normally does. But the big winner was Zynga, a maker of free games. Its most
famous game, Farmville, ranked 51st in overall web traffic during February
2011. But during the Superbowl it came 10th.
This is both good and bad news for old media firms. Good news because it
suggests that television continues to grip audiences. Bad news because it is
clear that efforts to steer television viewers online behaviour ( visit our
website! ) have not yet borne substantial fruit. People who go online while
watching television are not, for the most part, trying to augment their TV
viewing by looking up football statistics or Eminem s discography. Instead,
they are watering their digital crops.