Consumers Want More Control Over TV Viewing

There has been a shift in the way people watch television programmes, with consumers wanting more control over their viewing, according to the Olswang Convergence Consumer Survey 2006.

The survey discovered that Sky+ is considered the second most important and desirable device after the mobile phone, with the most popular reason for streaming and downloading being the control it gives consumers over what they watch and when.

58% of Sky+ owners claim to watch an equal amount of live and recorded programming, whilst consumers also appear attracted to the choice of content and viewing times offered by video on demand (VOD) services.

38% of consumers, on top of the 12% who are already receiving VOD, state they are interested in receiving VOD on their television sets. Of these, 45% state that they are most likely to buy a VOD service from Sky, compared to 22% who would expect to buy it from a cable provider and only 4% who would expect to do so from a telco such as BT. This suggests that traditional suppliers of TV content remain well placed to capitalise on consumer demand.

However, while new technologies allow consumers control over what to watch and when, people are paying less attention to programmes, whether they are watching them on a TV or on a computer, which lies at the heart of the battle for consumer attention.

Multi-tasking is becoming accepted behaviour with 46% of respondents emailing and 43% surfing the net at the same time as watching television. The incidence of multi-tasking is markedly higher amongst those whose computer is in the living room.

Consumers are also taking advantage of the functionality offered by personal video recorders to skip through adverts, with 86% of Sky+ users claiming they forward past adverts all or most of the time when watching recorded programmes.

Sky: 08702 40 40 40 www.sky.com