Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

... “We don’t actually believe there is such a thing as digital video. It’s all just TV,” said Jon Heller, co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel, which works with companies to monetize content within the new media space. “No one buys kitchen television, in terms of advertising, the same way that they don’t buy living room television or bedroom television. It is all just TV.” The difference, he says, is that the audience now has more choices about when and where they watch, and the television industry needs to figure out how to deal with that diffusion.

One unanticipated side effect of this greater availability, according to the seventh annual Deloitte State of the Media Democracy survey, released earlier this year, is that the availability of more ways to watch content–like laptops, tablets and other mobile devices–may be growing the amount of television watched overall, instead of simply replacing one form with another.

“Our conclusion is, the individuals using tablets and smartphones tend to be much heavier media consumers across the board, and in particular tend to be heavier users of digital applications, such as streaming and downloading, even if they’re not using their tablet to do that,” Deloitte vice chairman and U.S. Media and Entertainment sector leader Gerald Belson told Wired....

...Television is undergoing an analogous transformation. Although we sometimes watch with family or friends, we mostly experience TV in relative social isolation. We are disconnected from most of the people watching with us, deaf to the roar of the crowd during a game or the laughter of the audience after a punch line. We have learned to suppress our urge to talk about what moves us, settling instead for chance meetings at the water cooler the day after.

But all that has changed with the sudden rise of realtime social media, particularly Twitter. Just in the United States, tens of millions of people are talking to each other as they watch TV. This year's Super Bowl alone spurred over 24 million tweets. After 80 years of sequestered viewing, television audiences worldwide have forged Twitter into a social soundtrack for TV. If you are not part of the soundtrack yet, chances are that you will be soon....