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Television The Internet Entertainment

Next Year, People Will Spend More Time Online Than They Will Watching TV. That's a First. (recode.net) 74

Posted by msmash from the times-they-are-changin' dept.
Rani Molla, writing for Recode: It's finally happening: Next year, people around the world will spend more time online than they do watching TV, according to new data from measurement company Zenith. In 2019, people are expected to spend an average of 170.6 minutes each day on online activities like watching videos on YouTube, sharing photos on Facebook and shopping on Amazon. They'll spend slightly less time -- 170.3 minutes -- watching TV. The global transition from TV to internet as the main entertainment medium was a long time coming, but it also happened faster than expected. Last year, Zenith predicted that TV would still be more popular in 2019 but has since revised its estimates.
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Next Year, People Will Spend More Time Online Than They Will Watching TV. That's a First. More

Next Year, People Will Spend More Time Online Than They Will Watching TV. That's a First.

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  • But I watch TV online... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @12:52PM (#56765844)
    Not sure that "cord cutters" are properly tracked by these metrics.

    • I just saw a youtube video with one of my favorite TV stars- a man who found success first in Canadian television, then selling his show to American PBS networks, that did 15 seasons and a movie.

      He's now producing new content in the character online, and his sons have started a Twitch channel in which they show an episode and give additional director's style commentary interactive with a chat window.

      In the interview with network news, this actor/producer/creator said he'd never touch TV again, and had the w

      • Network Broadcast TV. Has the problem of trying to reach as many people as possible. It needs to be entertaining, but it cannot be insulting, informative, but shouldn't go over peoples heads.

        • That's a problem though. I get 500 channels piped into my house. There really should be more variety. Yet we end up with the fireplace channel, the sunset channel, and the swiss chalet rotisserie chicken channel. I can't even watch major cycling races in Canada even though I have 15 different sport channels. Instead they opt to have the same game playing on all of them.

          • It is worse then that, some of the channels I use to love to watch in the old days, Cartoon Network, the Learning Channel, BBC America... Use to have a variety of shows to watch. Now Cartoon Network only has Teen Titan Go, The Learning Channel has my 600lbs life, and BBC America swaps to Star Trek and Dr. Who.

            Sure they may be the popular shows, but having them on all the time at the cost of other gems they have rights too is a wast and there is only so much (for some of the show 1 is too much) of these sho

        • That was the description of the Red Green Show in a nutshell. Well, also, thoughts disconnected from action, from brains, well, from anything really (from another TV interview where he let the Interviewer try to play Red Green for a build that replaced a tire with old shoes).

      • Steve Smith of The Red Green Show?

        • Yep. Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati.

        • Not only that but I should mention- he's released all 300 episodes to Youtube of the old content, and he occasionally snips out a Handiman Corner or an Adventures With Bill to let his Youtube subscribers know things he wants them to know (Shows the clip, then an announcement).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Watching TV online.

      That's a wash

  • Does both at the same time (Score:3)

    by Zorro ( 15797 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @12:56PM (#56765882)

    Multitasking, look it up.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The art of doing more than one thing at once poorly.

  • If TV hadn't been sucking more and more each season since around the 2007 WGA strike, I'd happily continue to watch TV.

    • That was the year they came out with a bunch of reality TV shows and discovered that they could still get people to watch, without paying any high priced writers or actors. Giving somebody a million dollar prize or a recording contract is peanuts compared to the million dollars an episode that star actors demand.

    • the 2008 crash (and lack of a real recovery) did. There's less money to go around, meaning less money going into new shows and less risk taking on new ideas.

  • Content owners are same for both (Score:3)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @12:58PM (#56765898)
    Since much of TV is owned by large internet providers I don't see much of a need to separate "online" from "tv".
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • >> Next Year, People Will Spend More Time Online Than They Will Watching TV. That's a First.

    People Will Finally Spend More Time Online Than Watching TV in 2019: Study

    FTFY - no charge. (Flipping millennial copywriters - yeesh.)

  • Don't Worry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @01:04PM (#56765946)
    Don't Worry. Just because people aren't watching TV, doesn't mean they're doing anything useful or god forbid actually learning something. They've just replaced one passive, intellectually hollow activity for another. Soap operas and sitcoms have been replaced by social media and Amazon shopping.

  • How do you even count this? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @01:04PM (#56765950) Journal

    How do you even count this?

    Is watching Amazon video on the PC "TV"? On your phone?

    Old sitcoms on YouTube?

  • People will spend more time watching TV online using their former TV as a 2nd monitor.

  • 170 + 170 = 340; that's almost six hours a day of "screen time". No wonder unemployment is at an all time low.

  • Definition of "TV" (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @01:23PM (#56766110)
    I define "watching TV" as staring at a screen, getting stupider. People are just staring at different screens. They're still getting just as stupid, though.

  • Im not sure you can really differentiate the two (Score:3)

    by voss ( 52565 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @01:29PM (#56766160)

    People watch their favorite programs on netflix or amazon is that counted as tv watching or being online?
    People can watch live channels of both tv and radio online. When someone watches streaming tv on their phone
    does that count being online , watching tv, or being on your phone?

    • I count watching Netflix, Hulu and others as "watching TV" because it's the same passive entertainment no matter which delivery method you use to get it.

      But when talking about YouTube, things can get a lot more complicated. Are you passively watching a playlist of videos or are you searching for information and watching tutorials where the ability to pause, rewind and ask questions to the author of the video is important?

    • People watch their favorite programs on netflix or amazon is that counted as tv watching or being online?

      I consider 'TV' to mean 'force fed commercials and advertising'. So by that definition Netflix is being online. It'a small but important difference since TV, like Facebook and Google, exist primarily for advertising purposes. Netflix exists primarily for entertainment (and to a lesser extent learning since they have a few good documentaries). This is an important distinction because once you get used to a 'no-ad' format of entertainment, you learn quickly not to tolerate it. This should result in quite a sh

  • Same (in)activity, different venue. Is anybody really surprised by this? People are very well trained to be consumers, not producers. For most people, producing something (let alone something of value) is WORK not leisure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      A lot of online activity is creative and/or interactive. I think that makes it much better for the people involved.

      It's also often social, which is substantially better than watching TV alone.

  • If the repeal of Net Neutrality sticks and things go as poorly as they potentially could, people may be spending more time doing anything but using the Internet -- if they even bother paying for it anymore. If ISPs start mucking up the works enough people might just get frustrated enough to throw up their hands and just walk away from it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • No longer a relevant measure (Score:4)

    by trevc ( 1471197 ) on Monday June 11, 2018 @02:23PM (#56766614)
    I don't think 'how long you spend online' is a valid measurement anymore. We no longer use dial-up to connect to the internet. With phones and tablets, home automation and so-on we are 'online' 24x7.

  • 'Being Online' is way too broad a descriptor for spending leisure time.

    I do not see any reason to differentiate between watching standard cable / broadcast TV and watching a movie, tv show, or other video content via a Netflix / Hulu / YouTube / whatever.

    END COMMUNICATION

  • I've been spending more time online than watching TV for over 2 decades. I remember dialing up a BBS that had shell account access to the internet and running an IRC client on the internet before there was home internet dialup in my neck of the woods. It was more fun and interesting than almost anything on TV. My kids hated it when I took over the TV anyway, they didn't like watching NOVA.

  • I already watch all my TV online!
  • How do they differentiate between internet time spent watching Netflix (ie TV), and internet time spent doing internet things eg Facebook?
  • its nice line

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