Channel surfing vs Net Surfing
p2pnet.net News:- The amount of time Canadians are spending actively using the Net is on the rise, averaging 12.7 hours per week, up 46% from 8.7 hours in 2002.
And if things keep going the way they are, Canadians may soon spend more time surfing the Net than surfing the channels, says a new study.
More than a quarter of respondents (27%) say they don’t have a favourite site, says the report, “leaving the door wide-open for a national news and information website to capture their attention. Of the websites mentioned, CBC.ca and Canoe.ca have a slight lead over other news and information websites, both being chosen as Canadian’s favourite news and information website by 10% of Internet-using Canadians.
“CTV.ca finishes just behind at 8%, with CNN.com and Canada.com at 6% each.”
Typical Canadian Net-using adults spend about 11 hours per week listening to the radio, down from 16 hours per week in 2002, continues Ipsos Reid.
But while weekly surfing has taken over from tuning in to the airwaves, for the moment, “television retains the number one position among media sources with Internet-using Canadians averaging 14.3 hours of TV viewing per week,” says the report.
However, it states, “the gap between Internet and TV usage is closing (a difference of 1.6 hours per week compared to 4.5 hours in 2002), with the Internet threatening to overtake television should these trends continue”.
Not surprisingly, younger Canadian online enthusiasts (18-34) are particularly fond of logging on, “spending more time actively using the Internet (14.7 hours per week) than they do with any other medium, including radio (11.7 hours per week), television (11.6 hours per week) and reading newspapers (2.5 hours per week),” says Ipsos Reid.
“While Internet usage is having an impact on the use of traditional media sources, the perception among Internet-using Canadians is that the Internet is having a more profound impact than their behaviour would indicate. Internet-using Canadians are more likely to say that their use of traditional media sources as a result of Internet usage has decreased rather than increased. However, with the exception of radio, the average amount of time Internet-using Canadians are spending with each medium in 2005 is the same or even higher than it was in 2002.”
But while Net use is going up, Canadian surfers look to different sources depending on their news and information needs.
For example, says the report, people log on to look for specific or ‘niche-like’ news and information such as health (48%) and travel information/guides (45%) whereas TV tends to be used more for general news and information such as weather (70%) and national and international news (70%).
“Preference for specific news and information websites in Canada is still quite fragmented. Internet-using Canadians report using a variety of websites to search for news and information with no one website emerging as the leader,” adds Ipsos Reid.
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August 9th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Our family does not use the tv for passing time (couch surfing). We all have our own pc’s and highspeed conections and spend way more time on the internet and gaming than watching TV. Television stations should stream there staions on the net and try to get some of the watchers back ( advertising $). Most kids use msn and chat forums and having TV running in the back ground would be something I would do if I were in the television industry. I won’t be long and this will happen as advertisers will demand it. Most of whats on TV is for women anyways. I bet most of the remaining TV watchers are women and the change is mostly guys switching to internet and such for entertainment. I bet you have noticed more and more politicaly incorrect advertising on TV. That is because they see the change and are trying to get the men back. They need to this with their programing and also stream it online.
August 10th, 2005 at 6:44 am
I dunno about Canada but in Oz the tv networks seem to care only about the over 50yr olds to the point where there’s nothing on for anyone younger. The only reason there’s some childrens programming at all, is it’s a legal requirement for all networks here to show so many hrs per week. So we wind up with several year old shows from england, canada and the us. It seems that in Oz if you’re over 10 but under 50 the tv networks just don’t want to know you.
Which is fine, i gave up on tv over 8 years ago now. Watching it online? I could easily buy a tv tuner card for less than $100, i just don’t see the point. There’s nothing on tv that i want to watch. I don’t like sport, i don’t like “drama”, and the ads shit me so badly i can’t stay watching long enough even if they happen to repeat a movie i don’t mind.