Internet Helps ermm.. Harms TV?

Remember last week, when CBS announced that its YouTube presence had lifted its audience figures? Letterman was up five percent in the month since they’d started posting excerpts on the service.

Well, today, the BBC pub­lishes research that suggests the contrary:

Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result.

And online and mobile viewing is rising — three quarters of users said they now watched more than they did a year ago.

But online video viewers are still in the minority, with just 9% of the pop­u­la­tion saying they do it regularly.

Another 13% said they watched occa­sion­ally, while a further 10% said they expected to start in the coming year.

So what does that mean? Is internet video good for TV viewing figures, like CBS said, or bad, like the BBC says?

In part, the answer may lie in the meth­od­o­logy employed. Asking people what they do does not return the same results as meas­uring what they really do. People try to please researchers, and they rep­resent them­selves as the person they want to be. They might also not really know where their time goes.

There’s another way of recon­ciling the results. It also might mean that our tele­vi­sion viewing is becoming more filtered. Internet fans are watching less, but they are watching more of the shows that create a buzz on the net. It’s the long tail of tele­vi­sion that’s suf­fering not the fat head of the Simpsons, Family Guy, the Daily Show and the other top YouTube favourites.

Elsewhere: Michael Urlocker dis­cusses how the broad­cast business might respond to this dis­rup­tion. Antony Mayfield thinks the trend will continue.

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