Online video chips away at TV (Cable Networks DeathWatch™)

hollywood reporter ^ | Nov 17, 2008, | By Paul Bond

[Kevin J waldroup]

Online video chips away at TV (Cable Networks DeathWatch™) IBM: New media may be affecting 'couch-potato behavior'

Nov 17, 2008, 03:01 AM ET More evidence that online video is cannibalizing television consumption is due Monday, courtesy of an IBM study. Plus, online viewers don't mind the commercials too much.

After polling 2,800 people in six countries, IBM says 76% have viewed video online and 45% do so regularly. Of those who have watched online video, 15% say that as a result they watch "slightly less" TV, while 36% said they watch "significantly less" TV.

"Place-shifting alternatives may be changing consumer couch-potato behavior," according to the study.

[Luke21]

So who wants to watch infomercials anyway?

[Caribou]

That’s why I now have Netflixs streaming to my TV. Watch what I want without the same commercials over and over and over and over and over...................................

[rwfromkansas]

How’d you set that up?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I use Hulu TV a lot (www.hulu.com).

Very good and large selection of movies an TV series with very few ads. And those are only 15 seconds long at about two per hour.

It's really handy when I'm working from home late at night.

[M203M4]

The internet was what initially replaced TV entirely in my house - it got us weaned off of the constant barrage of mind rot.

I basically want to watch 5-10 minutes of media content a day (mostly news items that are reported questionably, so I can “see for myself”). I’m not going to pay for cable or satellite, plus the hardware, for that - now that the boobtube is gone, I’d not even replace it if the ability to view short clips for free is not sustained. I don’t miss sitting through 60 minutes of TV to watch 20-30 minutes of actual content either. And I use the word “content” loosely, because most of the programming is unfit for human consumption.

[RC2]

You don’t like infomercials???? Shame on you. When I do watch TV, I have counted 15+ infomercials, even on Fox. In fact I think that the commercials are longer than their program. It’s a waste of time.

[Caribou]

Buy their streaming box for about $120.00, pay $9.00 a month and have broadband.

Check it out here: www.netflix.com

[FrankR]

I remember reading a Popular Mechanics article years ago in one of their famous "predict technology of the future" pieces that said that (paraphrasing) "someday we will be able to interactively select what we want to watch on TV...".

Of course, how that was to be done was a mystery as neither computers or the internet had been invented (before algore was born, of course).

Well, they were right...it's here.