According to English research Sarah Pearson, there turns out to be an enormous gap between how people say they watch television and how they actually do. Although it is easier than ever to watch programmes at a time and on a device of one’s choosing, and people expect to be able to do so, nearly all TV is nonetheless watched live on a television set. In British homes, almost 85% of television shows are viewed at the time the broadcasters see fit to air them. It may seem dated, but the image of the family clustered around the living-room set is an accurate depiction of how most people watch television in most countries. In Latin America advertisers have learned to tout grown-up products on children’s channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery Kids, knowing that many parents will be watching with their offspring. Indeed, TV executives believe there is more demand for programmes that the whole family can watch together. Like all social activities, television-watching demands compromise. People may have strong ideas about what they want to watch, but what they really want to do is watch together. So the great majority of them first see “what is on”—that is, what is being broadcast at that moment. Restricted choice makes it easier to agree on what to watch. If nothing appeals, they move on to the programmes stored in a DVR. On the very rare occasions when they find nothing there, they will look for an on-demand video.
This helps explain one of the oddest and most consistent findings of television research: that people seem unaware of their own behaviour. In surveys they almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form. In particular, they underestimate their consumption of live television.
Efforts to improve the TV-watching experience have often gone wrong because they took people at their word. The past ten years have seen a parade of websites and set-top boxes—Apple TV, Boxee, Joost, Roku—offering a huge range of content and interactive features. All promised to deliver TV the way people (that is, individuals) really want it. Because they failed to take account of the social nature of television, not one has caught on. Efforts to turn TVs into personal e-mail devices and home-shopping outlets have fared no better. “The killer application on television turns out to be television,” says Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO of the Digital TV Group.
Some technology firms do “get it”, as the bloggers like to say. Yahoo is building internet widgets into the most advanced TV sets that appear as small icons at the bottom of the screen. Click on a weather icon, for example, and a sidebar appears with the latest forecast. The widgets work because they are unobtrusive and do not distract other viewers from watching their programmes.
Other technology outfits are learning to become more like television.
Live television is not just the most popular way of watching video; it also influences the way people watch shows on all devices. The most popular live television programmes tend to be the most heavily recorded and the most watched on computers and mobile devices. Technology is helping hits to attract even bigger audiences.
In the 1999-2000 season the most popular thing on American broadcast TV was “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, a game show. Every Tuesday evening it pulled in 28.5m viewers. But the rest were not far behind. The 10th most popular show that season attracted 63% of “Millionaire’s” audience, or 18m viewers. Even the 100th most popular show still got 30% of the top figure. By the 2008-09 season the also-rans had tumbled. The top show, “American Idol”, had 25.5m viewers. The 10th most popular programme pulled in 55% of its audience and the 100th most popular show just 20%. Relatively, the hits are becoming bigger.
Read more at the Economist.
