Lost in the Web: Does Web Distribution Stimulate or Depress Television Viewing?

Abstract

In the past few years, YouTube and other sites for sharing video files over the Internet have vaulted from obscurity to places of centrality in the media landscape. The files available at YouTube include a mix of user-generated video and clips from network television shows. Networks fear that availability of their clips on YouTube will depress television viewing. But unauthorized clips are also free advertising for television shows. As YouTube has grown quickly, major networks have responded by making their content available at their own sites. This paper examines the effects of authorized and unauthorized web distribution on television viewing between 2005 and 2007 using a survey of Penn students on their tendencies to watch television series on television as well as on the web. The results provide a glimpse of the way young, Internet-connected people use YouTube and related sites. While I find some evidence of substitution of web viewing for conventional television viewing, time spent viewing programming on the web — 4 hours per week — far exceeds the reduction in weekly traditional television viewing of about 25 minutes. Overall time spent on network-controlled viewing (television plus network websites) increased by 1.5 hours per week.

Waldfogel, Joel.
Lost in the Web: Does Web Distribution Stimulate or Depress Television Viewing?
NBER Working Paper no. W13497, October 2007.

Related posts:

  1. Lost on the Web: Does Web Distribution Stimulate or Depress Television Viewing? body {background-repeat: no-repeat;}Waldfogel, Joel. Lost on the Web: Does Web...
  2. TV online is not used as a replacement for TV viewing body {background-repeat: no-repeat;}From Nielsen’s A2/M2 Three Screen Report. Some highlights:...
  3. Television in Transition: Evolving Consumption Habits in Broadcast Media Worldwide 2008. body {background-repeat: no-repeat;}The worldwide migration towards new consumption habits is...
  4. Television and Beyond: A Kid’s Eye View. body {background-repeat: no-repeat;}From Nielsen: If you’re trying to locate a...
  5. Network Television Schedules on Life Support. body {background-repeat: no-repeat;}Consumers are growing increasingly disenchanted with their overall...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>