The Arbour Media Blog

In a story with interesting implications for the growth of online video, the New York Times reports today that

The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers on Tuesday that 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously.

There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.

The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.

That second reason is prompting Nielsen to think about a redefinition of the term “television household” to include Internet video viewers.

“We’ve been having conversations with clients,” said Pat McDonough, the senior vice president for insights and analysis at Nielsen. “That would be a big change for this industry, and we’d be doing it in consultation with clients if we do it.” [emphasis added]

The decline marks the first time in 20 years that television ownership has fallen in the U.S.

According to the report:

“While Nielsen data demonstrates that consumers are viewing more video content across all platforms — rather than replacing one medium with another — a small subset of younger, urban consumers seem to be going without paid TV subscriptions for the time being. The long-term effects of this are still unclear, as it is undetermined if this is also an economic issue that will see these individuals entering the TV marketplace once they have the means, or the beginning of a larger shift to online viewing.”

While the Times speculates the small declines means that TV will be at the center of  American homes for some time to come, we think that Nielsen is positioning itself for a future in which the audience for video becomes at least as significant as the cable and broadcast  audience.

As we’ve noted before, the “TV”  revolution won’t be televised.

Nielsen’s press release on the subject is available at the Nielsen website.

The technology news blog Gigaom has posted an interesting article on Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision’s experiments with making their cable TV offerings available via iPad apps.

In the first 5 days its iPad app was available, says Cablevsion, it was downloaded 50,000 times.  Time Warner’s iPad app was downloaded 360,000 times in the first month of its availability, and Comcast’s iPad offering has been downloaded 1.5 million times since it was released in November 2010.

The bottom line meaning of these numbers, according to Gigaom:

Cable subscribers are highly amenable to the idea of accessing content on their iPads.

Why is this important?

As it becomes normal for audiences to access cable video programming on iPads or similar devices, they’ll be all the more willing to give any video content they can find a try.

This means, in effect, that programs on Rocketboom, YouTube, CNN, the Discovery Channel, BBC America, Hulu, or any other web- or app-based  channel will be more and more on equal footing in terms of audiences’ access to them.

It means we’re on the cusp of a time in which 1000s of video content channels may bloom–channels that can in theory be created by any individual, organization, or business that has a message to broadcast–and in which audiences will become even more segmented by various interests.

At Arbour Media, we’re ready to help individuals, organizations, or businesses create such channels.

The “TV” revolution won’t be televised.

The New York Times reports that Netflix gained 1.1 million subscribers in each month of the first quarter of 2011 and now has a record 22.8 million subscribers in the United States. “Two years ago,” the report says, Netflix had  ”only 10 million customers and it was largely a DVD-by-mail service. Now it is a streaming force to be reckoned with.”

“The virtuous cycle we’ve mentioned previously of increased investment in streaming content, strong word of mouth and an expanding device ecosystem truly worked for us in the quarter,” the company said in a letter to shareholders.

What it means by a device ecosystem are its connections to video game consoles and Internet-ready television sets, which have rapidly proliferated and have driven subscriber growth.

The bigger picture is that people are getting more and more used to watching video in a streaming format that bypasses traditional broadcast and cable channels. Netflix’s rate of growth suggests audiences really don’t mind watching streaming video.

The headline says it all.

If anyone is temped to suggest the YouTube thing is going to blow over, this summary over at REELSEO.com should make them stop and think.

Among the interesting tidbits:

More video is uploaded every 60 days than the three major US television networks produced in 60 years. That’s what happens when you give a platform to the masses. Note that this stat doesn’t say anything about how good the content is every 60 days (compared to the relative quality of network TV).

The base age demographic for YouTube is 18-54. That skews quite a bit higher than most of us probably realize.

94 of AdAge’s top 100 advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube. There may still be plenty of disagreement in what the best method is to leverage online video for brands, but this stat shows there’s no shortage of brands willing to give it a try.

The total number of advertisers using YouTube has increased 10-fold in the last year. This just in… online video advertising–specifically YouTube advertising–is all the rage. Expect this trend to continue in 2011.