Live Internet Television

Pew Internet Research

Back in September, we took a reader poll of who we think watches the most online video, by age. Voters favored  “People & young parents 25-34″ over other age ranges. Before we dig into that answer, let’s recognize the fact that video watching online is growing rapidly among all age ranges. Pew Internet breaks it down:

9 in 10 internet users ages 18-29 use video sharing sites. 36% of young adult internet users watched video on these sites.

Online adults ages 30-49 also showed big gains over the past year; 67% now use video sharing sites.

Among internet users ages 50-64, 41% now say they watch video on sites like YouTube

27% of wired seniors ages 65 and older now access video on these sites

Regarding who watches the most online video, a teaser from Nielsenwire:

People have a hard time believing 60% of online video viewers are over the age of 35. Initially, it is a bit shocking: we expect that new media like online video would be more heavily composed of younger people. But the truth of the matter is that video has already reached popularity to the point that the video universe, in broad terms, looks much like the overall Internet audience.

Cutting to the chase…

Here’s how you voted on the categories being the largest (still more apologies for my attempt a dry wit with “fogies”):

It looks like we skewed young by a few years, and underestimated older viewers. Here’s what recent research indicates is the breakdown by age for online video watching:

Time to get excited about things to come!

TV content has every business reason to move online.

For example:

Boomers would be willing to give up their subscription TV service if they could get the same programming online.

By a five-to-one margin Boomers are watching less traditional TV than they did a year ago. Among this group, 62% say it’s because they’re not as interested in what’s on TV these days, and another 26% say they’re spending more time surfing the web.

…

Among traditional TV viewers, 20% of survey respondents say they would be likely to downgrade or cancel their current TV service package in the next six months. The likelihood of canceling is highest among cable (22%) and satellite subscribers (22%), and lowest among fiber-optic TV subscribers (7%).

When asked which one paid subscription – among all media choices – they’d be most willing to give up, 44% selected TV service, which fared significantly worse than any other subscription service.

When I think of people flooding the Internet with the desire to watch TV online, I don’t think of Spongebob in particular, dear as he is to my heart. But the facts say otherwise (see chart below).

The facts also say that 9 of the Top Ten online TV sites have yet to break 4% marketshare — most are at 1 & some change. There’s a lot of online TV watching to come, and it won’t be on individual broadcast or cable network sites. It will be aggregated for ease-of-access, to feel “more like TV.” Nothing online feels like true TV yet, but it’s coming.

Top 10 Network & Cable TV Show Websites, Week Ending 07-04-09

Wikipedia will be adding a cool video encyclopedia, with editing tools, to its properties in the next months. They’re hoping their large user base and clout will bring a lot more video into the public domain. Meanwhile, however, Erik Moeller (deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation) laments:

It is sad and unfortunate that the public broadcasters are not the ones leading this movement,” he says, adding, “The mission should be to do whatever they can do to maximize distribution, and I’m not seeing that right now.

Details at p2pnet.net and WebWireTV