Television Versus the Internet (eBook)

Will TV Prosper or Perish as the World Moves Online?

Barrie Gunter (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2010 | 1. Auflage
208 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-1-78063-166-0 (ISBN)

Infos

This book will explore the questions raised by the technological developments that have encouraged the multiplication of TV channels. TV is moving through a period of rapid change. Governments around the world are switching from analogue to digital forms of transmission to further expand the amount of content that TV signals can carry. At the same time, competition for eyeballs has also grown from outside that traditional marketplace with the emergence of the Internet. The roll-out of broadband and increased bandwidth has had the greatest impact on television because online technology can readily convey the same content. All these changes have created a great deal more competition for viewers within the traditional TV marketplace. The Internet has proven to be especially popular with young people who have adopted its applications to a far greater extent than their elders, though even the latter have now begun to take up online activities in significant numbers. Are these audiences the same? Do people make a choice between these two media or do they use them both at different times and for different reasons? Can television utilise the Internet in profitable ways to enhance its market position? Will television have to evolve from its current state to provide the kinds of content reception services to which people have become accustomed in the online world? If it does need to change to survive, will this nevertheless mean a radical new configuration of content and the disappearance of 'channels' with fixed, pre-determined programme schedules? - Examines the implications of new interactive communications technologies for the way people will use television in the future - Presents an analysis of changing styles of television viewing and changing orientations towards television - Examines the growing importance of the broadband internet as a source of information and entertainment

Barrie Gunter is Professor of Mass Communication and Head of the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester. He was formerly Professor of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield and previously worked in the broadcasting sector. He has published 47 books and over 250 book chapters, journal articles and other reports on a range of media, marketing and psychology topics. Among his current interests are the adoption and use of internet and digital TV applications.

Textauszug

2

The importance of television and the Internet to media consumers

The basis of any loyalty to television can be expected to stem from people’s perceptions of how important it is to them. How much is television valued by its viewers? Are there particular aspects of television that are important to viewers? Similar questions will also be asked about the Internet. This chapter will present evidence from a number of sources, both academic and industry-based, on how important television is perceived to be in general and about the importance attached to specific aspects of the medium’s outputs. What happens also if the medium is taken out of people’s lives? Do they miss it? Evidence on these questions will be presented from technology deprivation research in which people are temporarily starved of access to television and computerised technology including video games and the Internet.

How important is television to people today?

Television is highly valued by most people who watch it. It is not just television in general that people value, but also specific parts of its output. Despite crises of confidence on the part of major public service broadcasters and recognition across the commercial broadcasting sector that their world has become a more competitive place in the twenty-first century than it ever was in the twentieth century, there is plenty of evidence that television remains important to the general public. It is certainly true that the longest-established TV networks have seen their audience shares eroded across the 1990s and into the 2000s. Yet, television overall commands as much attention from people as it ever did.

The major difference is that the television broadcasting sector has many more players in the 2000s than it had 20 years earlier and this means that viewers have more choice and that viewing time has become more disaggregated across a greater number of channel offerings. Thus, while BBC1 and ITV1 witnessed a drop in audience share from 62 per cent in 1997 to 43 per cent in 2007, the average amount of time viewers watched television per week (c.25 hours) hardly changed at all (Armstrong, 2008).

Although we might readily acknowledge that television in general forms an important part of our lives, this finding by itself does not reveal very much. We need to know what it is about television that we value. For many people, the importance of television is defined by the programmes it provides. Increasingly, however, the way in which programmes are provided is also critical to viewers’ evaluation of the medium. The emergence of digital technologies has brought enhancements to conventional television viewing enabling viewers to have greater choice and control over what, when and how they watch.

Research by Ofcom (2006c) found that UK viewers (60%) extensively acknowledged having access to a wide choice of channels as a feature they most valued about television. Other features that were endorsed as having high value by large minorities of viewers were being able to access the BBC (44%), being able to access programmes from other broadcasters (39%), and being able to watch TV content on a normal TV screen (39%). The last finding may seem odd, but was significant in the context of this research that was carried out to assess public opinion towards the BBC iPlayer, a programme catch-up service available over the Internet enabling viewers to watch programmes they may have missed when first broadcast and that they also failed to video-record via their TV sets. Watching of programmes through the iPlayer service therefore requires the user to view them on a computer screen.

The importance of digital

The commitment to going digital with television broadcasting was made at government level and driven by the prospects presented by new communications technology to enhance the information transmission capacity of existing media systems and to introduce new transmission technologies such as the broadband Internet also capable of carrying large amounts of information. Furthermore, these new technologies opened up opportunities for media consumers to become producers and senders of content with ‘one-to-one’, ‘one-to-many’, and ‘many-to-many’ settings. Although one might expect that many members of the public would voluntarily adopt these new media technologies, the fact that digital television was presented as a fait accompli without debate as to whether it would or would not happen meant that the public was given no choice in this context.

Research conducted to assess early public reaction to digital television in the UK found that many people expressed anger about being forced to make the switch from analogue transmission to digital transmission. This anger was not expressed only by analogue viewers who had not yet switched. It was also expressed by some viewers who had already voluntarily switched (Klein, Karger and Sinclair, 2003). The adoption of digital television requires a new way of thinking about television. The growth in numbers of channels presents search challenges for viewers and increased interactivity demands a shift in orientation towards the television set that resembles more closely that adopted when using a computer. Faced with forced change, people do not always readily accept innovations. This reaction was registered initially with acceptance of the digital switchover of television broadcasting in the UK (Klein, Karger and Sinclair, 2004a, 2004b).

Clear majorities of respondents said they resented ‘the fact that I may need to pick up the cost for switching to DTV’ (79%); that it is ‘irresponsible of the government to allow people to continue to buy analogue TVs if they are intending to switch to DTV’ (75%), and that they were ‘angry that the government feels that they can force us to change to DTV’ (73%). In addition, two thirds (68%) felt that ‘DTV is being pushed through by the government regardless of what people want’ (Klein, Karger and Sinclair, 2004a).

Only a minority (25%) acknowledged that the technology switch to digital TV shows that the country is using cutting edge technology (Klein, Karger and Sinclair, 2004a). Thus, regardless of what the digital switchover may say about the UK as a nation, individual viewers harbour serious concerns about its implications for them and their viewing.

Later, more respondents disagreed with the switchover (50%) than agreed with it (38%). This result occurred even after the researchers had taken the trouble to explain the implications of the switchover. One reason for the negative public opinion was that the switchover was presented as inevitable. It was being forced upon people who had not been given a choice. Furthermore, there would be personal costs involved. Viewers would need to get new TV equipment and new video-recording equipment. There was also a widespread belief that all television in the future would need to be paid for, that is, over and above the TV licence fee (Klein, Karger and Sinclair, 2004b).

There was distrust of the government’s motives for the switchover and many people were not clear about the rationale underpinning it. Nonetheless, there were many people who recognised that technology was advancing and that the digital switchover could be seen as an inevitable result of progress.

In its Digital Dividend Review, Ofcom (2006d) asked viewers across the UK to evaluate a range of new TV services by ranking them according to their perceived importance to society and their personal value to respondents themselves. Looking at the percentages of respondents who placed different options in either first or second place, the most widespread support in terms of both societal and personal importance was given to the idea of ‘more digital terrestrial television channels’ (65% for societal importance and 63% for personal importance). The next most widely supported TV service was local TV with similar proportions of respondents saying that this was important to society (50%) and personally important (48%). A follow-on question invited respondents to rate the importance of different technologies independently (rather than making a trade-off between them) and clear majorities of UK viewers rated the idea of having more digital terrestrial television channels as important or very important to them personally (67%) and to society as a whole (73%).

Opinions about digital television indicated that most viewers in the UK felt that this new technology could bring important benefits. The real test of how significant these developments might be lies in the extent to which the new technology is voluntarily adopted. Many people objected to having the digital switchover forced upon them, but many others made the switch anyway because of the added value they believed digital services could bring to their viewing choices and experiences. In fact, voluntary digital penetration quickly became widespread in the UK. Digital television first became available to UK viewers in 1999. Within six years, seven in ten (70%) of UK viewers had acquired a digital television set (Ofcom, 2006d). This figure was helped by the introduction of a free-to-air multichannel digital television package called Freeview in 2005.

As with any new technology, some people took up digital television more readily than others. In the UK, the early digital adopters tended to have a younger and more upmarket profile than non-adopters,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.9.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Web / Internet
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Wirtschaftsinformatik
• ISBN-10: 1-78063-166-9 / 1780631669
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78063-166-0 / 9781780631660