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For the young, TV's
more fun & games
But it's the box itself, less the programs it airs
By Toni Fitzgerald
When Nielsen ratings last fall revealed that TV viewing among
young men had tumbled sharply, the assumption was that they were going elsewhere for
entertainment.
As it turns out, that was only half true.
Those 18-34 men were doing other things in the time they once spent watching
the broadcast networks. But they hadn't abandoned their TV sets.
They were simply using their sets for other forms of entertainment, according
to a new study from Mediaedge:cia.
And what are they using their sets for? Playing video games, watching DVDs and
watching previously recorded TV shows, all activities not tracked by Nielsen Media
Research.
Were Nielsen to track such activity, the report concludes, TV usage would not
be down among young viewers but up, and up dramatically over the past five years: 22
percent among teens, 19 percent among 18-24s, and 18 percent among men 18-34.
As it is, teens are off 3 percent, 18-24s off 2 percent, and men 18-34s down
3 percent in that span.
“The idea was to see, with all the new technology, competition and all the
rest, whether TV remains the focal point of entertainment in the household,” says
Lyle Schwartz, director of research and marketplace analysis for Mediaedge:cia. “We
found that the usage for watching TV programming continues to be high. It’s basically
flat or up or down 1 percent each year.
“But the interesting part is that consumers are using TV sets for more
and more options.”
And the problem, the study says, is that traditional measurement methods do
not account for this.
There had been speculation last year when the male 18-34 viewership drain was
first discovered that these viewers were being lost to video games to some degree. Since
then other research, including some by Nielsen, has confirmed this theory.
Nielsen also took part of the blame for the shift because of an adjustment in
measurement methods. Still, the nearly 10 percent decline had networks in Nielsen attack
mode and media people wondering whether television was still the best medium to reach this
demographic.
Schwartz finds that it is, as long as you know what type of television use to
target.
“There is the idea that at some point you try to figure out when the
consumer has maxed out their media consumption, but from this we see that TV continues to
be used with more and more technology continually added to it,” he says. “TV
will continue to be an important role in media usage.”
What this means for agencies and advertisers is finding ways to continue to
get their messages across through television but through different paths than the
traditional broadcast, cable or syndicated routes.
Schwartz points to gaming as perhaps the most attractive and desirable place
to do so. A Ziff Davis study released earlier this fall found that 54.5 million U.S.
households used a console-based game in the past year.
Nielsen, along with Activision, is working on a new monitoring device to
track in-game ads. |
Oct. 13,
2004 © 2004 Media Life
- Toni
Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.
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