The End of Television?

Special Report: Cultural Industries and the Internet: The New Instruments of Popularity
Re-composition and Synchronization of Audiences of Catch-up Television
By Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Thomas Beauvisage, Sisley Maillard
English

The catch-up offer has multiplied the possibilities for viewers to watch TV programs "wherever and whenever they want." For some analysts, this evolution is bringing on "the end of television," understood as having a scattered audience watching the same program at the same time. We provide an empirical study of this phenomenon, based on daily audience data for all the catch-up programs offered on the Web by French channels. We observe that, contrary to the "long tail" theory's claim, audiences are more concentrated on the Web than with TV streaming, and on-demand consumption remains for the most part bound by the time-frames set by the channels. Thus, on-demand consumption does not eliminate television's ability to bring audiences together to share content.

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