Warping Primetime by distributing on demand

With the launch of ‘on the go’ & ‘on demand TV, prime time is beginning to change. Users of Mobile TV services are hitting peak viewing during the afternoon and early evening. According to Telephia 61% of users are watching mobile TV between noon and 8pm. 30% of those are watching between 4-8pm as users view programs on their commute. Combine this with the office clip culture online and all of sudden we are seeing Primetime being stretched and warped at the edges. By no means does online and mobile TV viewing come close to TV Primetime, yet. But it will.

How much media do you consume during the day compared to 8-11pm Prime Time on your TV? I was shocked to see that nearly our entire office now consume more media outside of home than in it. Most of that is via online sites & RSS feeds and all manner of other entertainment sites plus the clip based sites (YouTube, Heavy.com), however a growing proportion are using mobile sites and applications to get their media fix.

We have recently launched a Mobizine (a mobile magazine) in the UK & South Africa called Kamikaze Videos. Its Jackass meets funniest home videos and we deliver 3 videos plus a couple funny stories a week to users every Friday lunchtime. Friday afternoon’s are “Viral Primetime”. If you want to send a crazy clip that whizzes into the Viral charts then this is the time to do it. Kids at school are showing it off by the end of the day and office workers are showing them off just after their first after work drink.

These mobile magazines can be both push and pull, depending on the content (and your handset). If you have a Flash enabled handset you can get the latest BBC news, Financial News or Celebrity Gossip buzzing in your pocket as it happens. Need more in depth info? Then switch on your Mobile TV service and you’re watching the live news. No need to wait for the evening news then.

Who exactly is using these services? While the users are male skewed, they are not just the young early adopter types, 50% are 25-36yr olds. They use Mobile TV to either see something that they must get i.e. football results or as a time filler. Hence commuting, in a queue at the bus stop are all ideal times. One surprise was that over a fifth of Mobile TV viewing was done at home. Is this the result of a lost battle to control the remote?

So the new warping of prime time is beginning as users are fed content they want, when they want it and how they want to watch it. This can make users feel swamped with choice & viewing options but as operators & broadcasters understand their viewers better they will begin to create platforms that allow us to have the equivalent of a “Video Pandora”. Pandora if you don’t know is a music recommendation service see www.pandora.com. When we have the video version of this we can then sit back and relax, knowing we are never missing anything that we actually want to watch and we are seeing a lot of content we never knew we wanted to see. Prime time will then be all the time.