Do the television channels commit suicide by the Web?

It is a commonplace to affirm that Internet competes with television. The young people on average spend more than one hour, in front of their screen, connected on the Web. However, in same time, the institutes of studies on the audio-visual audience always show, that the time spent by our dear blond, daily in front of the TV screen, remains invariably fixed at 3 a.m. and of dust. As the children remain compelled with the other activities of the daily newspaper which are the school, the extra-curricular activities, the friends, to eat and sleep, Internet did it give rise to the 25th hour?

Because, since years, it is of good tone in the audio-visual field to imagine that when it is in front of the television set, the televiewer captive, if not is captivated, and devotes to other activities only food consumption or sharpening! We would consume the media in an asynchronous way, the ones independently of the others. It is what justifies this common thought of the audio-visual one: if Internet takes my televiewer to me, it is to go to see another image… but on Internet.

From where the surge of “Web TV”, “wrestling up Tv” and other systems of diffusion of images to the request. That leads televisions to create an offer directly concurrent and devaluing by their audio-visual offer. A journalist who, following a subject presented in the newspaper of 20:00, announces “you can find the integrality of this report on our Internet site” says anything else only: “About Internet, you will know some more and be able to see it when you want” with the risk that the televiewers think “then, why look at your tv news, since Internet proposes some to us more”.

At the end of an episode or an emission, to announce that the televiewer can find this program with the request on the site of the chain, it is there still to explain why Internet offers more freedom than television. The purpose of all these messages are to bring the public towards services Internet which them do not return the Net surfer towards television. And there the problem is. To propose to consult an offer of contents extended on Internet, that it is text or images, affirms the superiority of Internet on the transfer of information to the detriment of the traditional audio-visual diffusion. To return its televiewers towards sites of this nature, it is to take the risk to lose them on “the small screen”, without having the certainty to find them on the Net.

Because most astonishing is that this offer of multicasting corresponds little to the reality of the uses and waitings of the Net surfers.

First report surprising, when one requests from the young generations what they come to seek on Internet, it video comes well after the play, the uses Community and the search for school information!! Email, dialogue by Cat, to make live its community are, after the search for information for its duties and the plays, the first use of the young Net surfers. For them, Internet is before a whole means of being with his/her friends and of finding its centers of interest.

Second report, less surprising, but that we confirmed all the same with cabinet ABC+: a 25th hour ago Internet but well a synchronous consumption of the media. 80% of the young people whom we questioned can look at television, on a program with regard to them, while surfant on Internet… on sites quite different from that of the chain which they “look at”. There the problem of the television channels is. They manage with difficulty to transform their audio-visual audience goes down for hearing Internet of it (less than 15% of the young people surfent on the sites of the chains). Moreover when they want video, it is Youtube and Daily Motion which obtain their vote. And when you question your entourage you will realize that we are increasingly numerous to have a behavior multiécran. The generalization of the mobile terminals connected to Internet of the iPhone type will widen this phenomenon with a broader target while starting with the young adults. I look at television while surfant on my mobile. And so moreover, the manufacturer of mobile introduces a technology allowing to make of his mobile the remote control of television, the loop will be buckled.

However, the 3:24 of daily television remain an undeniable asset for the chains. The stake for it is to propose with their televiewers programs which combine the assets of television and those of Internet. To propose an image in passive reading on the TV screen, having all the virtues gravitational of a traditional television program, associated with an interactive image on the screen of computer or the mobile that the televiewer orders and who proposes to him the assets of the interactivity via Internet.
Programs crossmédias TV and Internet into simultaneous. Programs to be imagined but for uses and technologies which are already there.

The young generations are applicants of such an offer, affirms us the study undertaken by ABC+. They are mainly laid out to accompany their emissions by TV on Internet, whereas the recourse to the SMS as average of interactivity with a program only 6% of them allure.
The young generations are posed in better vector of entry in the era of the crossmédia for the chains TVS. They do not consider the Web like a duplicate of the antenna, repeating the same program simply. They want programs crossmédia TV-Internet in which:

they become characters in 3D (to 65%)
they come on the plate TV (to 63%)
they invent stories (to 62%)
they return in drawing-animated (to 61%)

The future of television is thus in an antenna enriched by the interaction of its televiewer-actor-Net surfers. A crossmédia offer where the Internet enriches the audio-visual program as much as the reverse. A combination enters the two phenomena of the media of the 21è century, the telereality and community Internet.

A new type of programs which requires a reflexion globalmédia, a new writing and thus, diffusers aptent to take this risk. Who will be the first to cross the step?

Study ABC+ carried out in July 2008 for the account of 3D2+ SAS near a representative sample of 400 older children from 8 to 14 years.