YouTube, Gaming and Social Networking Busting TV's Chops 118
splitenz writes "A TV executive told a major Australian broadband conference that television audiences are slipping away into social media, gaming and other online subscription spaces. YouTube and online gaming is taking the traditional TV audience online and TV is struggling to fight back."
Australian Effect? (Score:5, Informative)
If there was some generational effect going on (the article does note that the elderly watch more than the average) it would be somewhat mitigated by the Economist's finding that
US numbers [nielsen.com] show a similar trend -
Those who are interested should check out the American Time Use Survey [bls.gov] - it has some rather interesting content (for instance: 15 to 19 read for an average of 5 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure. )
Taking the two pieces together it would seem we're watching more TV in general, and when we're online we have the TV on anyway. Hardly seems worth pounding the drums of the apocalypse over.
Re:Finally someone with brains (Score:4, Informative)
And when they go into reruns part way through the season, or they stop broadcasting entirely for a couple of weeks or more and then come back on. And what is it with the short season lengths? TV seasons used to last 25 to 30 weeks. Now they're 12 weeks???? To say TV is getting more lame as time goes on is like saying Ci Lo is just chunky. Maybe if they provided something worth watching instead of 'reality tv' they wouldn't be so far behind. It's all for the shareholders.
Create something cheap to produce to maximize revenue for the shareholders, instead of worrying about good product for the customers and long term stability for the employees. Instead of win, win, win, it is win for a short time, get fucked, get fucked. And then eventually the customers get tired of the crap product and it is lose lose lose. End of story.
Over emphasize of the shareholders so the already overpaid CEO can get bigger bonuses for a short time then out the door with a gold parachute. Same bullshit that plagues the financial industry plagues every other industry in North America and Europe lately. Sure, the shareholders should get paid, but not to the exclusion of long term viability. Businesses like these have adopted the parasitic self-cannibalization strategy since around 1990.