NEWS Newspapers and TV are losing out as broadband Britain is increasingly turning off from old media and turning to the internet for news and entertainment, research has found.
A new report from analyst house JupiterResearch has found that European TV watchers are spending less time watching the box and more time surfing the web. The report, Evolution of Media Use in Europe - Web Impacting Consumption found 27 per cent of Europeans are spending less time watching TV in favour of the internet, compared to 17 per cent in 2001.
It's not just TV that's suffering, however - the web is nibbling at consumers' reading time. In 2004, 18 per cent of European adults reduced the amount of time they spent reading papers, with just 13 per cent saying they did the same in 2001.
Previous research carried out by the analysts in the US and Australia found broadly similar results - and that could well mean bad news for TV companies in particular, the report found, as the trend could well be a knock-on effect of broadband penetration.
With more and more homes becoming broadband enabled across Europe, TV companies could see their viewers start to drop off.
Although the broadcasters haven't noticed their overall viewing time dropping so far, JupiterResearch is predicting that TV viewers and web watchers will start to polarise along age lines.
'Younger' users, those below 54, will continue to decrease their TV time while those 55 and over will remain devoted to their tellies.
Olivier Beauvilain, analyst at JupiterResearch and author of the report, said that while broadband converts have been swapping newspaper reading for getting news from the web, the shift from TV to internet is a more significant shift.
"For the TV time transfer, people are going home and preferring to connect to the internet for one hour, two hours rather than switch than on the television... it's cannibalising different activities," he said.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Decline in TV Watching may also be prompted by a decline in quality & choice of broadcast material. Having only recently (six months) gained access to freeview digital TV, providing upwards of thirty channels, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a program worth watching, even from that number of available options.
2. Frank Smith
Two things need to happen to speed this up:
1 Min 2 meg a sec b/band
2 Easier tv in a box pc's ( not quite there yet)
Then there will be a big change
3. Richard
Declining Quality of TV News Coverage:
While logging into Yahoo mail, I'm often amazed by the many major news stories which the UK TV news has failed even to mention.
The current tabloid style TV news programmes are obsessed with glossy pictures and "human interest" stories.
Apparently, unless there are TV pictures, it did not happen!
Unfortunately their TV pictures often distort reality, making unusual events appear widespread, commonplace and threatening.
It is time that TV returned to its prime role of wholesome family entertainment.
4. the piethief
Frank you missed the point
The article is not about moving television onto the Internet. Its about people preferring to spend time on the Internet (doing other things) than just watching programmed TV.
I have to say i am one of the above and thats not to say i don't watch films or tv programs its just that i choose the schedule and then mix it in with email, games, IM and reading/surfing.
Fudementally 'the Internet' is a far more flexable and useable medium with Broadband. This is where alot of the ISPs and analysts got wrong when talking about Broadband adoption, they thought you needed new apps to justify the cost/switch.
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piethief
5. Phil Tarbrook
Buttttt....you might miss a new advert...