Ericsson study: broadcast viewing down, online viewing up

People are spending less time watching scheduled broadcast TV and more time watching streamed and on-demand TV online according to a new study from Ericsson.

Ericsson’s TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2011 shows that 84% of respondents watched broadcast TV at least once a week, compared with 88% of respondents in last year’s study. By contrast, 33% watched online content at least once a week, up from 30% a year earlier.

Ericsson’s annual study into consumer viewing habits took in 13,000 interviews from people in 13 countries between July and August. It found that social media usage was having an increasing impact on the way people watch TV, with over 40% of respondents saying they used social media platforms whilst watching TV. Other common activities whilst watching TV included browsing the internet (over 60%) and talking on the phone (almost 50%).

In terms of time spent watching TV, Germany came out on top of the surveyed countries, with an average of 25 hours per week, followed by the UK with 24 hours and Spain with 23 hours. On-demand viewing was most popular in Spain, accounting for 44% of the total viewing share, followed by the US (41%) and the UK (40%).
Meanwhile, people said the most popular features of their TV service were the quality of the video, no commercials, a wireless home and personalised services. Respondents said they would be most willing to pay for “movie releases direct to the TV”.

Announcing the findings of the results, Ericsson also discussed some of the solutions it would be highlighting at IBC. The company will launch a combined hardware and software solution designed to address the growing multiscreen market. The SPR1200 Multiscreen Stream Processor is Ericsson’s hardware approach to multiscreen compression. It can be combined with the NPR1200 Multiscreen Network Processor, a software-based adaptive streaming segmentation and encryption processor designed to track dynamic updates in adaptive streaming formats and DRM systems associated with the needs of delivery to different devices.

Ericsson will be exhibiting at IBC on Stand 1.D61