New Nielsen Study Reveals Changing Role of Tablets and Television
by Bill Ives
A recent article by Clayton Morris, Study Reveals Changing Role of iPads, Tablet PCs found that 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smart phone owners use their devices while watching television. It also reported that 61 percent of eReader owners use their device in bed, while 57 percent of tablet owners and 51 percent of smart phone owners do the same. Now bed is one of the places I watch TV, the other is in my office next to my laptop.
Tablet owners spend more time on their tablets while watching TV than owners of eReaders and smart phones. This makes some sense as tablets will more likely have complementary activities to TV that reading a book and talking on the phone. Many traditional news organizations and magazines are noticing this trend and providing iPad-optimized versions of their print offering. I think you are also are more likely to reads news and magazines while watching TV than books because of their short segments that can be covered during commercials. At least that is my view. I find I get very restless during ads and need an alternative such as Twitter to occupy me until the TV show, usually sports, returns.
Clayton writes that TV is the new radio. “When there is no breaking news, people keep it on for background noise, information and entertainment. Gone are the days when a family sits around the tube, collectively focused like a laser on their screens.” Now here is what Don Tapscott calls stacking, “one screen plays something for the whole household, while another sits in the lap, surfing at the individual’s whim.” He concludes that people are still watching TV, they are just watching it more individually.
I think there is another point here since this complementary channel is digital and connected to the Web. It is not simply another channel for individual use in the midst of collective consumption. It brings in interactivity. So we often have old and new media working together. I think that the old media organizations that recognize this will be winners and many already have such the PBS St. Louis affiliate, KETC, where my colleague Rob Paterson did some interesting work as they looked to integrate TV with social media.
Business should take advantage of this to use mobile communications for short messages to their employees providing alerts, reinforcing key strategic or tactical issues, and supplementing learning activities. Because of the interactivity these digital devices bring organizations can also tap into employee viewpoints. There is an emerging communication channel that can be creatively mobilized.
