The article is written by Claire Atkinson and headed “Research Report: Youngsters Not Abandoning Live TV”. It discusses research conducted by the Council for Research Excellence on the video watching patterns of people aged between 18 and 24. The idea was that marketers believed that the modern youth spend more time watching TV and videos online compared to watching them traditionally on TVs. Hence they were starting to concentrate their marketing activities heavily towards online marketing campaigns.
The article tells us that on average a person aged between 18 and 24 will watch 5.5 minutes of computer video compared to w significant difference of 209.9 minutes of live TV viewing. The official result given out by the study said that TV viewing still amounts to the highest viewing even in the age group studied. In the eyes of the researchers, this has created a dispute with the common belief of marketers that people in this age group are more skewed towards watching TV on their mobile phones or computers. This is certainly an enormous difference.
However, the study also claims that digital media has now moved into second place just behind live TV after pushing the radio aside and leaving it at number three.
In my opinion, this is not completely shocking. I have always been very surprised as to why marketers put more effort into advertising online. There are very few ways of advertising online and the major ones include pop up, pop-under, banners, and active x displays. Each of them has severe limitations. Almost all of these techniques can be blocked by any user who wishes to. All browsers now come with pop-up blockers pre-installed which only leaves banners and active x displays. Many cautious users do not enable active x displays on their computers and banners are so limited in their design that they can hardly attract a person browsing the website.
But coming back to the point, the computer is a machine which I think will never be able to take over from live TV as the amount of effort to keep using a computer is much more than what is required to watch TV. Also, using a computer almost certainly means that you are multi-tasking. For example, you will be chatting to your friends and listening to music and watching TV on it. This wears a person out more quickly and just to relax the person will eventually go and sit in front of a TV.
Using a computer doesn’t count as relaxation in my opinion. A computer was built for work. It was built to perform specific office-related tasks. It has been converted from a workstation into an entertainment machine. But since the TV was invented for the sole purpose of relaxation, it will be some while before the computer can overtake the TV for pure pleasure and relaxation, and who knows, we might have something better than even the computer at that time, making my first line true, that computer will never be able to become a better alternative than a TV.
Works Cited
Atkinson, C. “Research Report: Youngsters Not Abandoning Live TV” Broadcasting & Cable. 2009. Web.