We only have a finite amount of time on our hands at Piaras Kelly PR

We only have a finite amount of time on our hands

4 Comments Published February 5th, 2007 in General

Kenneth Li on the Reuters Blog points out the obvious:

It took a study to discover that blacking out and waking up to discover you’ve lost half of your Sunday trolling through YouTube also steals time from watching TV. A recent Harris Interactive poll showed that out of 2,309 U.S. adults, some 363 of them were avid YouTube watchers. 32 percent of these YouTube viewers said it took away from their TV time.

As sites like Bebo or YouTube explode in terms of popularity, the time people spend using these new mediums invariably means that newspaper readership, television viewing figures and radio listenership will decline. It isn’t because they are suddenly deemed unpopular overnight, but because there is only so much time in the day.

What people need to realise is that these declines aren’t terminal and a natural equilibrium will be reached. The most important thing to take from this however is to note that media fragmentation doesn’t only apply to traditional media. Some people would like you to believe that blogs will replace newspapers. However, as the Irish data from the Edelman Trust Barometer goes to show (I’ll discuss this in more length later), blogs are only one aspect of peer-to-peer communications.

We’re moving from the era of the blockbuster to the era of settling for less. The Oscars will be aired this week, but as each year passes the spectacle’s influence declines that bit more. It doesn’t matter if they blog it, podcast it or whatevercast it, in the era of the abundance of information people have so much to choose from, but limited time to experience it.

Technorati Tags: Edelman, Media Fragmentation, Piaras Kelly, YouTube

4 Responses to “We only have a finite amount of time on our hands”

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1 fmk Feb 5th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Some disjointed points.

5%. That’s what 32% of 363 out of 2,309 is. 5%. Given the small sample size, you’d guess that 5% is probably also the margin of error. But that’s the problem with statistics. You can make them mean anything. Or nothing.

The argument that YouTube might be taking from TV depends upon where people are doing their YouTubing. At home? Or (more likely) in the office? So is it media that is being taken from, or actually working hours? Or other surfing?

Radio listenership is an interesting thing to include, especially after last weeks UK radio stats were released. Overall, radio listenership continues to grow. Radios on mobile phones, radio on the web and listening to your old fashioned radio while surfing the web are all adding to radio’s audience.

From a personal POV, I find I’m constantly culling sites from my bookmarks (still don’t believe in RSS, sorry) and constantly culling podcasts and vodcasts from iTunes. I just don’t have enough time to consume them all and live a life. And the more that is added, the more I have to delete in order to fit more into the same amount of time.

Am looking forward to your Edelman Trust barometer stats. I expect they will be quite enlightening (are these the stats that put Techies ahead of TDs on the trust level, as reported last week?).
2 Piaras Feb 5th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

I’d agree, my online reading list goes up and down like a yo-yo and there’s only about four podcasts that I listen to.

You’re refering to the same research, but we didn’t compare techies to TDs unfortunately. It’s looking like it’ll be next Monday before I get round to discussing it though.
3 fmk Feb 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

Piaras – I think it was The Register I read it in. Tech was the best industry, with a seventy-something per cent trust rating. Elsewhere in the story, it noted that that the government had a trust rating of below forty per cent. I’m probably exaggerating a little to go from government to TDs, but it’s worth it for alliterative pruposes
4 Piaras Feb 6th, 2007 at 8:14 pm

Yeah that’s the research, although the data you’re quoting is from two different droups: most trusted industry and trust by institution.

Technology was the most trusted industry in Ireland and globally.

Out of business, the media, government in general, religious institutions and NGOS, business ranked first, then NGOS. Religious institutions ranked bottom. Off the top of my head though I can’t remember media and government in general ranked third and fourth or vice versa.