Internet Video Cannibalizing TV

In a predictable McLuhanesque turn of events, the BBC is reporting that Internet video is eating into convention television watching:

[from BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Online video 'eroding TV viewing']

Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result.

And online and mobile viewing is rising - three quarters of users said they now watched more than they did a year ago.

But online video viewers are still in the minority, with just 9% of the population saying they do it regularly.

Another 13% said they watched occasionally, while a further 10% said they expected to start in the coming year.

Marshall McLuhan pointed out (in 1964, in The Extensions Of Man: Understanding Media) that new communication media turn older media into content, into traffic. Television coopted radio formats, and then moved beyond them. Now, Internet video -- much of which is repurposed TV broadcasting -- is consuming the TV experience, and regurgitating it into something new.

Round and round we go, and where it stops nobody knows.

Well... except we can conclude that TV viewing will continue to erode, and that some 'Golden Age' of Internet video is right around the corner.

Scott Karp wonders about business models, but perhaps it is too early for that:

[from Is The Content Business Eating Itself Alive?]

So will online video save the broadcast TV business or kill it? Perhaps the better question is — will the video content business come out on the other end of this transformation greater or more diminished? Will loss of control over distribution mean loss of control over monetization? If consumers won’t tolerate pre-roll ads, and if the success of YouTube is driven by embedding the player in other sites, i.e. no control over the surrounding real estate, will new modes of monetization be nearly as profitable as old modes?

I think we will have to wait and see what new nooks and crannies appear in the face of online media -- what will emerge as obvious places to meter viewing, or stick something-like-ads -- and it's too early to see what that will be.

[Pointer from Mathew Ingram]

tags: internet+video, television, marshall+mcluhan, understanding+media

Comments

[Brian Dickerson]

I hadn't heard those stats before, but I have to imagine the gap has widened since. It seems only in the last year or so that internet video has become easily watchable as television.