Online TV and the fine art of Hype

So a new study by Motorola claims that 45% of Europeans watch some TV Online (here it is on the BBC)

"Viewers across Europe are no longer satisfied with fitting into schedules dictated by broadcasters and are turning to the choice and flexibility offered by TV over the internet,"

said Motorola's Karl Elliott.

Much though we would like to believe this is true, we frankly think this is mainly hype. Online TV is undoubtedly on the rise, and growing rapidly, but it is still from a tiny base.

And it turns out that the small print is that the survey was of broadband households only, and was c 2,500 mainly digerati. Given that European Broadband penetration is about 33%, thats more like 15% in total

And we think that even that overstates it today - define some TV!!

We are some of the most "digital meedja" people we know, and our kids are new media natives....but the number of hours we spend collectively watching TV online can be measured in minutes per week. In fact, watching our "digital native " kids, what we saw is a high consumption of YouTube, BitTorrent etc in the early days, but this decreased over time and now its only really an occasional thing......computer gaming, communicating on social nets / email / IM and playing music seem to be the main functions of the PC.

TV is typically watched via STB and PVR today, which would appear to give "good enough" flexibikity for now

Granted we are not a valid sample size, but we doubt we are outliers on the low end of the confidence curve.

In fact we suspect the distribution of online TV watchers is probably a strong power law distribution - a tiny number of people watch most of the online TV...and we'd bet, like music, that most of it is Pirate TV.

And even if IPTV are included as part of "online" TV, the user bases in the few countries that have full IPTV services are at best a few % of the TV viewing public.

Elliott goes on to say:

"We are witnessing a nation of citizen schedulers who are in control of their entertainment, allowing them to watch what they want, how and when they want it."

What people are turning to are propositions like Netflix and Lovefilm and recording TV on their PVR's right now. As far as online TV is concerned, we believe we are still witnessing a large number of people dabbling with online TV because it is novel.

But hype, like death and taxes, seem to be with us always.

Of course, Motorola - that well known supplier of online TV technology - may be trying to be helpful by seeding the market - and it comes at Joost the right moment !

(Perish the thought that they are trying to make a name for themselves !!!!

But is it helpful?

Over-hyping, disillusion, and then a new reality are the standard patterns of any new technology it would seem. Does the hyping phase help the adoption of new technology, or does it hinder it by sucking money into too early, sub optimal technologies that then muddy the waters for years afterwards.

One thing is for certain...when the industry hypemachine winds up, caveat emptor!