CMPT 320 Research Essay

Development of Broadband Internet is correlated
with the decrease in TV popularity.

by

Nick Bilogorskiy

Abstract

The time that North American viewers spend watching television is constantly being eroded as other options come on the scene: the Internet, videotape and DVD rentals and video games. Internet is leading the entertainment options of teenagers already and the trend is spreading to the most important (for advertising) 18-49 demographic. In this essay I examine the effects broadband internet development has had and is having on TV viewing time, and come to the conclusion that they are inversely proportional: as more households get access to broadband, TV viewing time averages decrease in those households (communities).

Introduction

Some 59 percent of the overall U.S. population use the Internet, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A large number of this statistic is composed of college students who were born around the time the first PCs were introduced to the public, and they have grown up with these technologies, representing the Internet generation. 42% of online students say they use the Internet most often to keep in touch with their friends; 38% say they use it most often for academics. (Pew).

Because of the entertainment-driven culture they live in, they often know more about computers, and are more adept in using them than their parents.  To put it bluntly, college aged kids spend way too much time on the computer. From playing games, to surfing the Internet, to chatting with friends online, to doing homework, the amount of time spend on their computer is beginning to rival the amount of time spent watching television. Oh, and forget reading books, let alone going to the library to get them when entertainment is readily available through the Internet. It is standard procedure to get all research for school and college assignments off the Internet, leading to plagiarism (“copy-pasting”). Internet provides a vide range of entertainment options, as well as up-to-the-minute news and research sources. Everything is only one click of the mouse away, and oftentimes, a person’s curiosity can get the better of them.

Internet has also made a huge impact on the various industries that are part of the economy. In particular, it had a negative influence on TV industry.

 
Background



Television sets and computer terminals will certainly merge, cohabit, and coexist in the next century. In 1996, computers with built-in television tuners became available as well as set top boxes to allow Internet access via television sets. Because of the proliferation of television sets throughout many homes, television sets and computers are increasingly likely to share space in the same room. (Seiter) 

Many people have become adept at watching television while using the computer. As personal computers proliferate in middle class homes, the boundaries between leisure and work time, public and private space, promise to become increasingly blurred (Kling 1996). Video streaming, already a commonplace on the World Wide Web, has been implemented on Web Sites such as CNN's to replay the "News Story of the Week." Advertising industry analysts predict that animated advertisements on the Web will dominate in the years ahead. (Schiller 1997)

According to Statistics Canada 32% of people watch TV primarily for News, and next highest share (13%) watch TV for games and variety of entertainment programs.

On the contrary, Internet is used mostly for communicating with friends (chatting, MSN, etc), and research. However, Internet is gaining ground in the news reporting as well as gaming sectors.

Method

I collected rating figures, TV usage and Internet market penetration figures from sources like Statistics Canada, National Cable Television Association, and Nielsen Media Research. I then group them into tables and analyze the correlation between the rise of households with Internet access (and difference in such rise between US and Canada) and the fall of TV ratings and TV viewing averages (and difference in such between US and Canada).

RATING - A rating is the percent of households tuned to a particular program from the total available TV households in a designated area.

Results

According to a new study from Pew Research, since June 2000, the number of high-speed home users has quadrupled from 6 million to 24 million Americans. The total number of TV households in USA (Nielsen) is over 106 million. So, there are still more households with TV’s than broadband Internet connections at home. This is a radical disproportion representing the head start TV had on the Internet, but the latter is catching up at a vast pace.

In fact, there is a trend of television competing with the Internet for leisure time. Internet usage is far higher in the US than in any other country of the world. Seems that in the countries were Internet is more developed, TV viewing time averages decrease. Table 1 shows that Americans watch more TV in total than any other country.

Table 1 – Average daily TV viewing time 1999 (Western Europe =1.00, Screen Digest)

Country	Index	Country	Index
USA	1.23	Belgium	0.92
Italy	1.12	Portugal	0.81
Spain	1.09	Norway	0.78
Canada	1.00	Austria	0.76
Germany	0.97	Sweden	0.75

Perhaps more compelling evidence of this trend is found in the States, where TV viewing has actually fallen at a rate of 0.4 per cent a year, despite a massive increase in channels, the launch of digital satellite and the introduction of digital cable. (While USA residents still watch more TV than anywhere else in the world, it also has the one of the most accessible and widest spread Internet system, comparable only with Canada). (Seiter).

However, here is even more compelling results showing the correlation of broadband Internet and TV unpopularity.

Table 2 - Comparison of the US and Canadian broadband Internet markets, 1999 (Stat Can, NCTA)

	Broadband Internet subscribers	Households with access to broadband internet	Percentage %
Canada	364	4800	7.6
USA	1600	29000	5.5

Note that while Canada has quite a bit less total broadband subscribers, the higher ratio of them is observed than that of the States, therefore TV viewing times should decrease even more rapidly in Canada (compared to 0.4 % per year in USA). Next table exemplifies this prediction.

Table 3 - Canadian TV viewing averages trend (Statistics Canada)

This figure reflects a slight downward trend since the peak of just over 23 hours recorded in the fall of 1995 and at the beginning of the 1990s.

Residents of Newfoundland and Quebec provinces have long been the leaders in television viewing time. In the fall of 1999, they reported watching for an average of 24.7 hours per week. Television is even more popular among French-speaking Quebecois. Their weekly viewing time averaged an estimated 25.5 hours, about five hours more than English-speaking Quebecois and four hours more than the Canadian population as a whole. (Statistics Canada)

As we can see from the following table, these provinces (Quebec and Newfoundland) are among the 1^st and 4^th lowest respectively in the number of households with Internet access. It’s easy to see the correlation in this case…

Table 4 - Households with at least one regular Internet user, by province. (Statistics Canada)

	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
	% of households
Canada	29.0	35.9	41.8	51.3	60.2
Newfoundland and Labrador	26.1	28.8	35.2	45.5	50.2
Prince Edward Island	25.7	35.4	40.5	51.1	57.8
Nova Scotia	31.8	37.8	41.1	52.0	57.4
New Brunswick	28.1	31.0	38.0	45.2	52.4
Quebec	19.8	26.2	33.1	43.6	53.7
Ontario	32.9	39.1	44.5	54.2	63.7
Manitoba	28.8	33.3	38.3	49.8	56.7
Saskatchewan	26.4	33.7	39.9	46.9	52.6
Alberta	34.0	45.0	50.8	58.8	65.3
British Columbia	33.2	42.0	48.1	55.9	65.3

Conclusions

There are still advantages that television has over Internet, for all of its failings, TV has been cheap, easy to watch at home, enjoyable to talk about with others, and reasonably successful as an educational tool. Moreover, it had a huge head start as compared to Internet.

Nonetheless, with broadband internet spreading rapidly, people are relying less on the traditional information channels (TV) and spending more time on the Internet: surfing, emailing, chatting, creating and sharing content. As a result, clear trends can be identified as TV ratings/share decreased overall in the past 3 years, and overall viewing time decreased, while time spent on the Internet increased among all age groups.

References

1. Kling, R. Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices (2^nd Ed.) San Diego: Academica Press, 1996.
2. National Cable Television Association (NCTA 2000)
3. Nielsen Media Research (http://www.nielsenmedia.com)
4. Pew Research Center for People and the Press (http://www.pewinternet.org/)
5. Schiller, D. “Cornering the Market in Cyberspace,” Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1997.
6. Screen Digest Limited. (http://www.screendigest.com)
7. Seiter, Ellen. Television and New Media Audiences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
8. Statistics Canada (http://www.statcan.ca)