Nearly 80 million Americans (43% of the online population) have watched one of their favourite TV shows on the internet, up from 25% 12 months ago, according to new research from Solutions Research Group (SRG).
A full 20% of the American online population said that they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, ahead of the 14% who say that they use cable video-on-demand (VoD) offerings.
A report from Screen Digest said that revenues for free to view web services will rise by only £1 million from 2007 to 2008, but are expected to increase to £98 million by 2012 as commercial services pick up market share (see Revenue For Free To View Web TV Services To Rise To £98m by 2012).
The report predicted that over 1.5 billion television shows and specialist programmes will be downloaded or streamed in the UK this year, and indicates that the BBC’s iPlayer will be a driving force of this increase.
SRG interviewed 1,150 Americans aged 12 and over in November 2007 for the Digital Life America study.
The study also found that “to watch a specific show” was the main reason cited for 21% of all visits to major network websites in November 2007.
If a household has a DVR and broadband, DVR is the preferred means of time-shifting. DVR users are becoming more aggressive in skipping ads, said SGR; 65% said that they “always” skip advertisements compared to 52% a year ago.
Those who viewed one of the leading 20 prime time shows in the past 24 hours were asked to identify the source of viewing. Overall, 25% of prime time viewing was time shifted using a DVR, broadband, mobile or similar.
Among viewers 18-34, one third (34%) of viewing was time-shifted. And among 18-49 households with a DVR, 55% of the leading 20 shows were time shifted.
Palisades MediaGroup published research in January which claimed that although more US viewers are recording programmes with DVRs, they are not actually delaying viewing for very long (see US DVR Viewers Quick To Catch-Up On Programmes).
The Palisades study discovered that, on average, more than half of all DVR primetime programme playback is done within the same day it was recorded.
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