The next wave of "TV" viewing

From today's Spots N Dots: A new study from the Solutions Research Group reveals a big increase of people viewing primetime programming on the internet in the past year. SRG says that almost 80 million Americans -- 43% of the online population -- have watched one of their favorite shows on the internet. That’s up significantly from 25% a year ago.

I was having dinner with some tech-savvy 20-somethings a few weeks ago, and got onto the conversation of media. I made a somewhat shocking discovery (at least to me) that most of these young adults are falling into a new territory of media consumption that could potentially eliminate the need for local television stations altogether. Nearly everyone told me that their household currently has a high speed internet connection, but NO household connection to cable or Satellite TV. I suppose I assumed the high speed internet connection went hand-in-hand with a cable/satellite subscription, but apparently, I was wrong. The general consensus among the group was:

"I don't need cable. Anything I want to watch on TV, I can get on the internet."

In this multi-media world, TV employees are getting ever more used to working in a multi-media environment. We already translate nearly everything we do onto the internet. But what happens when the web starts to replace the television entirely? Where is there a place in this environment for local television, local news or local television advertisers? Going to ABC.com to watch the most recent episodes of Ugly Betty or Grey's Anatomy is all well and good for the ABC Network, but what about the local ABC affiliate, who's revenue depends on viewers tuning into their favorite ABC programs on local television? Is there a place in this new internet driven, consumer focused media world for the local television affiliate?

This internet-driven viewing is bound to only increase dramatically in the future, and local affiliate television executives must find ways NOW to evolve into this new world. The TV execs are bound to look at this small subset of internet-only-non-cable households and think that the number of homes falling into this category is too small to be of any worry. A quick check of Scarborough Research, and I estimate the total number of homes falling into this category to be about 7.5% of the total Tampa Market. While 7.5% is nothing to scoff about, if you look at Adults 18-34, 11.4% of these homes are internet-only.

Our market ignored the impact of homes with cell-phone only (no home phones), thinking that the number of homes was too small to worry about. When the percent of cell-phone only homes reached 18%, AND Nielsen changed its methodology to include these cell-phone only homes, the resulting ratings drop caused TV General Managers across the market to sit up and pay attention.

We cannot afford to sit back and wait and be surprised by the next great wave of changing media habits - the internet-only, non-cable homes.