We’ve all known for a long time that TV as we knew-and-loathed-it was under pressure, as people discovered there were things more rewarding in their lives than passively sitting in a darkened room, being bathed in light from a box in the corner of the room, watching whatever the channel controller decided to ‘entertain’ them with.
In a rather self-serving survey, “Digital Gaming in America”, Ziff Davis Media attempts to further fan the flames of this long lasting discussion, as they reveal that video gamers are watching less TV than they did previously, and will continue to reduce the amount they are consume.
Before you run to your boss, waving a printout of this story in your hand, proclaiming the near-death of TV. The results of the survey do reflect the general trend of what is happening, but do bear in mind the size of survey – 1,500 households (ie people who happened to be in, answered the phone, and had nothing better to do than answer a series of questions), compared with 295m people that live in America isn’t what you’d call statistically robust.
What did they find? About a quarter reduced their TV watching over the last year, with about a further fifth planning to do the same in the coming year. To put some hours against that, they estimate that there’s been a two hours per week drop over the last year to 16 hours a week this year, around a 10% drop.
The wolf isn’t quite at the door of TV. Looking at the hours/week, the reduced figure is still over 2.25 hours of TV a day, quite considerable when you consider what other task people do for that period of time, beyond working and sleeping.
In 2003 the BBC did some far more interesting research in this area. Of course they found that numbers of hours watched dropped, but what we found significant was that those hours that were being spent in front of the TV, weren’t dedicated to watching it.
This was particularly true of the younger viewers (34 and under) who were doing other things – texting their friends, Web browsing, talking on the phone, playing games on portable games systems – while in front of the box. They would dip in and out of the TV programme as it was on, occasionally letting it grab their attention – treating it far more like radio. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to figure that their attention would be elsewhere during the advert breaks.
Where the Ziff Davis survey does become more interesting is looking at gaming on mobile phones, particularly as this report is US-centric and the market isn’t very mature. A surprising 42% of surveyed gamers had bought games for their phones, and that they’d spent an average of US$13 (~€10, ~£7) each over the last three months.
An additional surprise for us was the length of time the games had been played on the mobile phones – 19 minutes per gaming session. Given the size of the display and general difficulty of playing games on such restricted controls, this is a revelation.
The split of games played was Arcade (57%), Card (44%) and Puzzle (37%) – another suprise for us given the device’s restrictions mentioned in the paragraph above. We suspect that the dominance of arcade games will reduce as players realise thinking games will be more rewarding than twitching with little buttons.
Oh … by the way Ziff Davis just happen to publish the games magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine and 1UP.com – and their ad sales people are just sitting there waiting to hear from you if you want to shift your advertising budget from TV to their mags.
Ziff Davis Video Game Survey: Gamers Continue to Cut TV Viewing
BBC – TV’s Tipping Point: Why the digital revolution is only just beginning
After a period of speculation, a press release on UK cable company NTL’s Web site makes it official that they intend to move their customers to broadband connection “up to 10Mb as standard.” 
We think it may be some time before this actually gets to the customers, as NTL are also talking of introducing an interim service, ‘The Turbo Button,’ which will burst a connection to higher speeds, when customers are downloading bandwidth heavy content like video. 
Almost a fifth of US consumers have admitted falling victim to identity theft, with younger adults at greatest risk, according to new figures. 
Experian-Gallup found that around two-thirds of consumers who have yet to experience identity theft felt that it was unlikely to happen to them, with only six per cent taking the precaution of purchasing some form of identity theft protection. 
New US research claims that Americans are becoming increasingly “digital,” with over three quarters owning computers and many households verily humming with multiple digital electronics products, including cell phones to entertainment devices to cameras. 
The research was commissioned by hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, who were keen to remind users of their role in the digital revolution: 
The BBC’s online coverage of Live 8 in July notched up a record volume of Web traffic on their radio and music Websites. 
The latest figures for the BBC’s online traffic also show a healthy boost in figures for their sports coverage on the Radio Five Live Website, with 910,841 unique users being recorded during June, compared with 840,019 the same period in 2004. 
It was mainly good news elsewhere, with Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 1Xtra, Asian Network and BBC 7 all increasing their unique users compared to the same period last year, with only 6 Music – one of our favourites – letting the side down with a disappointing slump from 418,729 to 356,564. 
Hellomagazine.com, the online version of the ghastly celebrity magazine Hello!, is expanding its existing SMS and JAVA mobile offer with a new WAP portal. 
A bookmark directly linking to the portal will be sent by return, with users able to browse the latest headlines for free. 
Celeb-thirsty fans can check the headlines then go in deeper if they want the full story with photos. We’re really happy to be adding HELLO! WAP to our mobile offer and we’ll soon be beefing it up even more with wallpapers, ringtones and other entertaining stuff.” 
Those of you struggling to maintain a Wi-Fi connection from next door’s access point may be exclaiming a Victor Meldrew-style, “I don’t belieeeeve it!” at the news of a mighty new world record being set for an unamplified Wi-Fi link. 
There is now talk of attempts to smash the current Bluetooth record of 1.08 miles. 
Illegal music downloaders shell out more for legitimate music downloads than goody two-shoes music fans. 
How much both groups spend on CDs wasn’t specified. 
Respondents cited built-in cameras, organiser functions and video cameras above music players in their preferences for mobile phone features. 
Trying to work out the law surrounding this Wi-Fi malarkey seems to be a tricky business. 
According to an article in the Financial Times, Microsoft says it has now built a database containing the whereabouts of “millions” of WiFi networks. 
London’s Ravensbourne College is launching a new program called the School of Computing for the Creative Industries. 
We would have thought that most of the passion manifests itself in the student bar, but the School insists that the new creative “understands that s/he is defined by the impact and credibility of their online presence.” 
All the technical facilities in the School will be built on open source platforms, with support offered to students wishing to release projects under free and open source licenses.