Live TV Is For Old People: Time Shifting And Online Make Up Nearly Half Of All Viewing

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Between online video, DVRs, and on-demand cable the amount of time people spend watching live TV (you know, with all of those commercials that advertisers spend $70 billion a year on) is shrinking fast. Only 52 percent of American’s viewing time is spent on live TV compared to online and time-shifting alternatives, according to a new survey of 1,000 American consumers by market research firm Morpace. And that percentage decreases the younger the audience, with the key 18-to-34-year-old demographic watching live TV only 41 percent of the time, versus 64 percent of the time for those 55 and older.

The alternatives to live TV are growing and basic cable is under assault, but no one single competing technology is taking over. People watch DVDs 14 percent of the time, online (including streaming video from services like Netflix) 13 percent of the time, saved programs on their DVRs 12 percent, and on-demand cable 6 percent. The survey breaks down online viewing into video from online sources like YouTube (9 percent) and streaming video from services like Netflix and Hulu (4 percent). For 18-to-34-year-olds, online video makes up 16 percent of their viewing time, and streaming video makes up another 7 percent.

Those numbers are the share of all viewing time devoted to different channels. The share of audience who views ate least some online video is much larger. Half of all people surveyed (51 percent) watch at least some online video, and 23 percent watch at least some Netflix-like streaming video from the Internet.

One of the major reasons viewing habits are changing is because people are watching video on a lot of different devices. While 96 percent of respondents watch TVs, 59 percent use at least one other media-viewing device. These include laptops (40 percent), desktop computers (36 percent), mobile phones (9 percent), dedicated media players (8 percent), netbooks (4 percent), and tablet computers (2 percent).

Company: YouTube
Website: youtube.com
Launch Date: February 2005
Funding: $11.5M

YouTube provides a platform for you to create, connect and discover the world’s videos. The company recently redesigned the site around its hundreds of millions of channels. Partners from major movie studios, record labels, web original creators, viral stars, and millions more all have channels on YouTube. YouTube is predominantly an ad-supported platform, but also offers rental options for a growing number of movie titles. YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who...

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Company: Netflix
Website: netflix.com
Launch Date: 1997
IPO: NASDAQ:NFLX

Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with more than 33 million members in 40 countries enjoying more than one billion hours of TV shows and movies per month, including Netflix original series. For one low monthly price, Netflix members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Learn more about how Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) is pioneering Internet television at...

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Company: hulu
Website: hulu.com
Launch Date: March 1, 2007
Funding: $100M

Founded in March 2007, Hulu is operated independently by a dedicated management team with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Beijing. NBC Universal, News Corporation, as of April 2009, Disney, Providence Equity Partners and the Hulu team share in the ownership stake of the company. Hulu is an online video service that offers a selection of hit shows, clips, movies and more at Hulu.com, numerous destination sites online, and through the ad-supported subscription service, Hulu Plus. Hulu...

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