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.

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• 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)

I’m coming to this a few days late due to being in transit to Cow Africa, but UK comms regulator OFCOM has published it’s regular digest of facts and stats. Among other things, the look at adult media literacy reveals that online TV watching is relatively high in the UK.

In particular, 29% of Internet users, watch TV online or download programmes or films. This is largely driven by broadcasters such as the BBC and its iPlayer service, but it means that with 73% of the UK population online, over one in five adults (21%) watch TV over the Internet.

The research also shows that Internet usage among seniors is on the increase, with 41% of the over 65s now online. The Ofcom report also refers back to earlier data about most missed media – I personally use this stat time and time again, especially as it shows that TV is less and less of a ‘can’t live without’ for 16-24 year olds and that for them, mobile phones have pushed PCs+Internet into third place (NewTeeVee has the chart).

The statistic about Brits watching TV online is interesting. It shows that if the content and ways of watching it are good enough, the uptake will reflect that. And that content is what people are used to seeing on their TV screens.

For instance, despite all the talk about the growth of online video and reach of the You Tubes of this world, a report in the summer by Comscore found that these sites capture around 10 minutes of the average US Internet time, and 15 minutes for the UK.

Image – Mr Phillip

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