Only yesterday, I wrote this post concerning cable television companies moving to control internet distribution of their content-providers material. In that day's Wall Street Journal, a smallish column on the back page of the Marketplace section
"Online video is cutting into television, albeit slowly.
People are watching more video than ever on every type of screen -- television, the Internet and mobile devices -- according to a report on the nation's viewing habits to be released Monday by Nielsen Co.
Nielsen found that during the fourth quarter of 2008 the number of users and the time spent watching each of the three screen media rose from the previous quarter. "If people like video, they like it wherever they can get it," said Susan Whiting, vice chair of Nielsen.
The biggest jumps came in the number of viewers watching video on mobile devices and "time shifted" television, that is, programming viewed with a digital-video recorder. Each rose about 9% in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. Roughly 11 million people used mobile viewing and 74 million people watched DVR programming. Internet video users increased 2.3% to 123 million people.
In both time spent and number of viewers, Internet video grew at a rate twice that of television. Michael Vorhaus, president of consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates, points to the growth as a threat to traditional television viewing. "It's not going to go away and it's not going to get better," he said.
For the first time in the Nielsen study, people ages 18-24 spent nearly the same amount of time -- roughly five hours -- watching Internet video each month as they did watching DVR programs. Other age brackets watched half as much or less Internet video than they did DVR video."
It reinforces why cable executives are so worried. Clearly, the tide is shifting more rapidly to DVR and internet. But since so much video is now being viewed straight from the internet, it's quite possible that the cable companies have already lost the entire younger, under-30 generation.
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