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The average American watches more than five hours of TV per day, but pretty soon that leisure time may be dominated by YouTube and other online video services.
In an address at CES 2016, YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl argued that digital video will be the single biggest way that Americans spend their free time by 2020 – more than watching TV, listening to music, playing video games, or reading.
The amount of time people spend watching TV each day has been pretty steady for a few years now, Mr. Kyncl pointed out, while time spent watching online videos has grown by more than 50 percent each year. Data from media research firm Nielsen shows that it's not just young people watching online videos, either: adults aged 35 to 49 spent 80 percent more time on video sites in 2014 than in 2013, and adults aged 50 to 64 spent 60 percent more time on video sites over the same time period.
Why the shift?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zinho on Wednesday January 13 2016, @05:31PM
Unfortunately for the TV networks, what they're offering isn't what we want. I'm not sure it's ever been what we really wanted, just what was available.
At the turn of the millenium (1999-2000) Qwest Communications ran an ad that showed they understood what we want: ". . . every movie ever made in any language anytime, day or night." * [youtube.com] So far even the Internet has failed to provide that for us, despite Bittorrent's best efforts. Youtube is getting close, despite the Studios' best efforts to neuter it.
It seems to me that we have the technology to provide what we want, but not the business model - likely because the price point the public is willing to pay is far below what generated all the revenue for Hollywood and cable companies for so many years.
* really, I'd like to see TV episodes, live performances (concerts, theater, etc) and news reports added to that list as well. There's no reason why anything that's been recorded since the advent of digital video can't be archived and made available on the 'Net besides the cost/benefit ratio for the copyright owner. I'd love to see the Library of Congress taking on a role as central repository for that sort of thing and stream their archives to the public.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Wednesday January 13 2016, @11:26PM
It seems to me that we have the technology to provide what we want, but not the business model - likely because the price point the public is willing to pay is far below what generated all the revenue for Hollywood and cable companies for so many years.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/2015-ad-spend-rises-to-187b-digital-inches-closer-to-one-third-of-it/ [techcrunch.com]
Puts TV Advertising spend at $79bn, $250 per person, or about $670 per household - $55 per month per household. That means on average a US household pays $55 to watch TV, in addition to their various cable subscriptions. (By comparison the TV license in the UK, which fund the BBC, is $210 per household, or $17.50 per month. )
If the average person watches 1 hour a day, or 360 hours a year, and 1/3rd of that is adverts, that puts the average worth of time at something like $2 per hour.