They Can’t Be In Two Places At the Same Time… So Far

Michael Hedges April 4, 2013 Follow on Twitter

There is no end to media obsession with devices. Content, once again, is taking a second seat to distribution and changing with it. Keeping the attention of viewers, listeners and readers surrounded by multiple devices is a new distraction. What people see, hear and read has fundamentally changed.

The average Norwegian household is equipped with six screens, says a study from Epinion and Specific Media. More than 60% of persons 15 to 75 years are using a second device while the television is on. Among people 15 to 35 years it’s 84%. Is this the triumph of multi-tasking or attention deficit?

“It is clear that attention is reduced,” observed Specific Media spokesperson André Smedsrud to Kampanje (April 2). “Humans are not built to operate on ten platforms simultaneously.” Attention - attracting and holding it – has long been the sine qua non of the media experience. Without it there are no readers, viewers or listeners. And there is certainly no advertising.

Fighting for attention is far from a new problem and the much ballyhooed second-screen phenomenon remains a challenge, said TVNorge commercial director Bjørn Solvang, in the same Kampanje article. “For a long time we have had something in our laps while watching television – newspapers, books, magazines, kids, girlfriends. What’s new with the so-called second-screen is that it allows interaction with friends, the television channel or the program you’re watching. When the TV industry defines this as an opportunity it is because the new screens have recreated and reinforced the need for ‘simul-seeing’ and the increased ease of simultaneous experiences.”

Academics have also investigated the multi-platform effect on television viewing. “The rise of new media interfaces and web viewing platforms has also altered the experience of watching television,” wrote Carolyn Birdsall and Anthony Enns in the Journal of Sonic Studies (October 2012). “Not only do these interfaces alter the context in which television programs are viewed by time-shifting, eliminating advertising, and removing programs from televisual flow, but they also provide metadata about the programs and their content, which further de-emphasizes the ‘liveness’ of televisual texts.” In other words, people are ‘seeing’ something fundamentally different.

While mobile device sales continue to sour, global sales of television receiving devices fell in 2012 as the flat-screen buzz from digital TV appears to stall. Shipments of TV sets of any kind dropped 6.3% over 2011 sales, reported the IHS iSuppli Worldwide Television Market Tracker Report. It was the first dip in a decade and the IHS analysts don’t expect sales returning to 2011 levels until 2015.

Consumers in developed markets made the switch from old analogue cathode ray tube (CRT) devices in recent years. “While some specific events contributed to the downturn of 2012, such as the fall of sales to the Japanese market, the decline reflects a fundamental slowdown in the television market,” said IHS analyst Tom Morrod in a statement (April 2). “Although television shipments will stabilize in 2013 and growth will return in 2014, developed markets have become saturated with flat-panel televisions.”

Household economics, they say, dictated the slow-down in Western Europe, Germany excepted, and North America. Analogue switch-off in France, Italy and Spain didn’t necessarily help TV set sales. So much for that digital dividend, it seems.

The end of a government subsidy program to encourage energy efficient products pushed sales lower in Japan. TV set sales in the Asia-Pacific region, generally, were lower, India significantly. War and civil strife affected sales in the Middle East and Africa, the only regions seeing growth. Latin American TV sales should see a boost in 2014 with the football World Cup in Brazil.

Radio broadcasters turned apoplectic when automakers Ford and Toyota indicated at the Mobile World Congress in February a shift away from offering radio receivers in the dashboards of future cars in favor of smartphone docking stations. “For as long as anyone can remember, the car radio has owned it’s own little piece of real estate on the dashboard,” wrote Anthony Gherghetta in Australian radio trade portal Radioinfo (March 20). “The space on the dashboard that was once reserved for the car radio has morphed into a digital gateway offering everything that the web has to offer. In the connected car, AM, FM and DAB radio are now just apps like any other.”

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