Watching TV on the Internet is still in its early stages, and studies continue to show at this time that the growing number of people watching TV online hasn't as yet eaten into watching traditional television, as a matter of fact, it continues to help increase viewing, according to the studies I've seen.
Mediaweek talks about a recent Nielsen study "A Barometer of Broadband Content and Its Users," which confirms this is still the case.
Having said that, online video viewing is growing strong, as an approximate 81 million broadband users watch video on the Internet at work or home. That's a strong increase of 11 million over the September 2006 numbers.
At this time the TV networks have to be happy as survey respondents say they watch more TV at this time in response to viewing videos online, with 33 percent saying it increased their watching of TV, while 13 percent say they watch less as a result. This was as of March 2007.
I'm a little skeptical of these numbers because I know television viewing hasn't increased by 20 percent during that time. Nonetheless, other studies have confirmed that this is the current trend, as attracting people to watch regular TV.
Once the online market starts to develop its own hits, I think we'll start to see some of this change. This won't be able to continue based on simple hours in a day. Eventually this will start to change in favor of online video viewing.
Of course it won't be long before that will be on the TV too, but not necessarily through the networks.
Comment Preview