The Fading Glory of the Television and Telephone?
Despite the decline of print media, it’s generally a given that TV still forms the foundation of the average consumer media diet. For example, the results from the recent (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report were clear. When asked to choose one can’t live without medium, 50% of consumers chose TV with the PC+Internet in a distant second place at 15% and mobile phones at 11% (print scored 4%).
However a Pew Report from the US (via the NY Times) provides a slightly different take on the role of TV. The title of the report – ‘The Fading Glory of the Television and Telephone’ – already tells you what you need to know. Only 42% out of 3,000 Americans surveyed felt that TV was a ‘necessity.’ By comparison, in 2006, 64% of Americans said they absolutely had to have one.
Pew’s research is interesting as unlike in Britain’s Ofcom report, TV was pitted against other every day household electrical items rather than other media.
As a result, I suspect that both the Ofcom and Pew reports are if anything complimentary. The delivery mechanism of TV is increasingly irrelevant, but the content itself is not. Hence, it’s products such as BBC iPlayer that are behind the fact that in the UK 17 million people now get their TV from the web.
TV, telephone dependence increases by age
And what about the telephone? Though 62% of Americans say that it’s a necessity (down from 68%), fewer than half (46%) of 18-29 year olds think that it is. In fact, the Pew Report has two fascinating graphs that show how some media forms get more essential by age.
Landline telephones, TVs and cable TV services become more of a necessity as you get older. Meanwhile, the younger you are, the more essential mobile phones, the Internet and computers are.
And on that note, check out the difference between how 18-29 year olds and 30-49 year olds see essential media.
For 30 and 40 somethings, the PC is more important than the cell phone, while for 20 somethings it is the other way around. This again mirrors what Ofcom found – in the UK among 16-24 year olds, the mobile phone was seen as more of a necessity than PCs + Internet.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Britons spend half their waking hours using technology, finds Ofcom (telegraph.co.uk)
- TVs, landlines on decline among Americans (msnbc.msn.com)
- TV still must have media for consumers, but under 25s as likely to choose mobiles (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
- Britons ‘multi-task’ with media (bbc.co.uk)
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@Mark Pack – Very true, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the clothes dryer. It might be a case of economics – to be cynical I am guessing green considerations don’t mainly figure here.
@Alexandra Reid – Of course while the mobile phone only ranks as an essential for 47%, the younger you get the more that changes. So for the under 30s, it is actually 59%, very much mirroring the UK Ofcom stats published last month.
It’s shocking to me that mobile phones ranked significantly lower than air conditioning. One of my colleagues recently blogged about her excellent experience using the telephone for making pitches with UK media. She explained that, in her experience, the rumours of the telephone call’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated and that telephone calls still play an important role in the PR practitioner’s day-to-day practice. She agrees that, in the grand scheme of all the tools available, telephone popularity may have slipped, but there is nothing quite like speaking to someone to get your point across. So don’t count the phone call out just yet!
The number that really jumped out at me from your first table is the big fall for “clothes dryer”.
Hard to think what long term trend would account for that: it’s fashionable to wear damp clothes? climate change means clothes lines work quicker? – neither really quite make it as explanations!
So I wonder to what extent the figures show the impact of economic downturn, and clothes dryers (and TV) are seen more as luxuries – but ones that may therefore pick up again in line with the economy?