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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: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday January 13 2016, @11:53PM
Television? That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year 2040
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hkj2tOJ6bk [youtube.com]
I suspect a rare case where Trek may be accurate in it's prediction, and it's not something I'd have guessed even in the last 90s (while I was watching new Voyager and SG1 episodes by downloading them over a 56k modem)
Of course there's a question of what is TV? Sure, watch american idol live on ABC on a Saturday night and that's TV. What if you time-shift it by a few days? What if you watch a 45 minute TV drama live? What if that drama is time-shifted? What if it's the same format but made for netflix? Is "Man in the High Castle" TV? How about "Gotham"? Is Jeremy Clarkson's new show "TV"?
On youtube, 6 million people have watched a 20 minute program which analyzes a trailer for a film [youtube.com]. On multiple occasions [youtube.com].
20 minutes is a similar length to a half-hour TV program minue the adverts. 6 million is a similar amount to those that tune into the Simpsons each week (although in the youtube case that is global audience, so probably only 1-2 million for US)
Why are the Simpsons (20 minutes, 6 million viewers) a TV episode, but these youtube videos (20 minutes, 6 million viewers) not?
It seems the popular youtube videos tend to be either based on other works (films, games, etc), or real life. There seems to be little original drama that pulls millions of viewers on a regular basis.