Television is still the preferred form of entertainment, though it increasingly has to vie for people’s time with panoply of technology, a new study has revealed. Six out of 10 Australians prefer sitting down at home and watching scheduled TV, according to a report by consultants Deloitte. But while they are doing so, 60 percent of people said that they were multi-tasking on other devices such as phones, laptop computers and tablets such as the iPad a figure that surprised Deloitte’s media partner Damien Tampling. “I know from my own experience that my wife recently pulled out a tablet when we were watching The Voice to vote, so it’s happening but I didn’t expect to see it at that level,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Tampling as saying. Before the results of the survey came out he said he would have estimated the number of people doing something other than exclusively watching the TV at a third. The fact that people are watching TV at the appointed time had everything to do with the popularity of shows such as The Voice, My Kitchen Rules and MasterChef. According to Deloitte, the fact that people are doing something else shouldn’t be a worry for media companies who are increasingly worried about the fragmenting audiences and the lack of attention paid to ads. The rise of people visiting sites such as Facebook and Twitter to comment on the shows they are watching has given a new lease of life to the TV networks, said Deloitte, which surveyed 2000 people aged 14 to 75 for its State of the Media Democracy Survey. However, this doesn’t mean that there is hardly any time for any new media in our already busy lives, said another media partner, Clare Harding. Technology has enabled people to be more efficient with time so they can email from phones while simultaneously listening to music bought moments after they heard it on digital radio. “We have found ways to fill that dead time and every time we get a new device, then with it comes the ability to consume more media. While we are doing something there is always something else happening in the background,” Harding said. Nevertheless, she said every medium was competing in the game of “attention economics” and the report found that some activities such as reading magazines, playing video games and attending live events were losing out; they all ranked among the least preferred sources of entertainment. Source: Indian Express
