Thursday, August 21, 2008

(Online) Video Killed the Television Star?

There are two views on how TV and YouTube will get along in the future
  1. YouTube is a threat to TV and will become its demise
  2. YouTube is an additonal channel to TV and the two will eventually create a hybrid media source
I personally believe that the latter viewpoint is true. My hunch is that the Internet will incorporate more and more video content in time, as:
  • Video cameras become more commonplace & cheaper (quality of mobile phone video)
  • Methods of posting video content to the internet become easier
  • Broadband continues to increase in speed and overall usage
  • People find it more acceptable to communicate and interact in this way

Note: This has already been covered intially in my post 'This time the revolution will be televised', so I'll not go into it again.

But on the other hand there are those who believe that Online Video will bring about the death of TV, particularly in the guise of YouTube. So are we right to ask Buggles to rewrite their song? Or is everyone just getting a little too paranoid?..... errr.... YES!

A recent study by IMMI found that 20% of primetime television viewers are watching some episodic television online and that this grou (the majority of them women) don't have the time to catch everything, so use the online episodes as a way to catch-up on the ones they missed live.

Here's their full report: ttp://www.immi.com/pdfs/OnlineViewership.pdf

As eMarketer agree, there is no reason to believe that the increase in online video is causing a subsequent drop in TV viewing:




It does then beg the question of where these extra hours are coming from.... perhaps they've stopped listening to 80's radio stations!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

TV and YouTube are for the time being still fairly different beasts (push vs pull).

What kind of channel you choose depends on the product, the market, the costs, etc. It doesn't make sense to distribute cars in a push model, but once you get to the spare parts, that's exactly what you do.

The Olympics are a great example, for instance. The 100 meter dash is great for tv; but fencing probably goes to streaming media, where, and this is key, you can still make money because you have this very specific audience.

So yes, I'm sure the 2 will marry. In Holland, they've already done so in a number of cases (but then again, we're always a bit ahead on that front ;-).

August 21, 2008 at 1:36 PM
Hayden Sutherland said...

Boudewijn
Thanks for your comment, you point about push vs. pull is spot on. A hybrid of the two will be what happens across the digital world and not just in forward-thinking Holland :-)
I'm looking forward to seeing adverts for bad movies with the line "Straight to YouTube" on them soon.

August 21, 2008 at 10:27 PM

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