Growing Up Wired

Kids have embraced new media, but they have not abandoned linear TV or 30-second spots

by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 12/30/2007 7:00:00 PM

If the future can be found in today’s children, their habits are already confirming and contradicting some long-held notions about the future of television.

“Kids are very comfortable consuming media and video on all platforms,” said Paul Condolora, senior vice president and general manager for Cartoon Network New Media. “They live in an on-demand world and expect to find their shows not just on TV but everywhere else — online, mobile, VOD, etc.”

Yet, their enthusiasm for on-demand media hasn’t dampened their willingness to watch advertising.

“We’ve all heard these predictions that young people won’t want to watch commercials,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting System. “Anyone who has kids, knows that’s a myth. They love them. They watch them over and over.”

Colleen Fahey Rush, MTV Networks executive vice president of research, agrees. She said the vast majority of viewing by younger demos is still linear. “Among the 12 to 34 demo in [digital video recorder] homes, only 10% of the TV viewing is time-shifted. That means 90% is linear.”

In fact, TV viewing remains at record levels for younger viewers, said Ron Geraci, senior vice president of Nickelodeon Research. “TV still accounts for the vast majority of their media consumption, with about 25 hours a week for the 2 to 11 age group,” he said. “Their TV consumption [like the rest of the population] continues to grow.”

Nor is there a very high propensity to fast forward through ads. “The new C3 ratings [that Nielsen launched this fall that track viewing of ads in programs up to 3 days after their live debut] for Nickelodeon are virtually the same as the live rating,” Fahey Rush said.

Even better, the newer platforms seem to enhance viewing of the linear channel. Juliette Morris, senior vice president of partner market, content distribution and marketing at MTVN, cites several examples where making content available online or on demand has increased the ratings of the linear network.

In August, for example, Nickelodeon set up a special video-on-demand area with episodes of Drake & Josh and sneak peaks at iCarly and other new shows.

That helped boost Nickelodeon’s VOD streams to over 19 million, a 100% increase from a year earlier, and increased TV ratings. “iCarly had one of our biggest premieres ever, and Drake & Josh saw a 100% increase in their time slot,” Morris said. “The newer platforms are clearly additive.”

Condolora agrees. He said Cartoon expects over 2 billion game plays on their Web sites Cartoonnetwork.com and Toonamijetstream.com this year and over 300 million video streams. The average unique user spent 77 minutes a month on the CartoonNetwork.com site in July 2007.

Usage is also growing for video on demand, where kids programming ranks in the top three genres along with music and subscription VOD fare from premium networks.

Cartoon had 6.4 million on-demand views in August, while Boomerang’s VOD offering had 3.6 million in July, up 71% from a year earlier.

At Nickelodeon, Geraci said that they expect to have some 200 million on-demand views this year, double the 2006 figures, and online game plays will top 1 billion. In September, all their kids and family sites had about 23 million visitors, who spent on average 90.3 minutes.

That growth is also opening up opportunities for newer networks.

CJ Olivares, general manager of Fuel TV, which is in about 24 million homes, said that network’s target demo of 12- to 24-year-old male viewers are particularly heavy users of online and mobile media.

Users are downloading about 1 million of Fuel’s podcasts a month and their seven podcast channels on iTunes all rank in the top 100, with three in the top 20.

Yet, Fuel viewers are “relatively tolerant of ads,” he said. “They’ve been exposed to billions of ad impressions by the time they reach their teens. Ads are part of their world and they are willing to watch them. The bigger issue is how they are presented.”

Both the kids’ 2 to 11 demo and the teen 12 to 17 age group are also much heavier viewers of cable network programming than the general population.

Between January and Nov. 11, 2007, cable’s average audience of kids 2 to 11 during the entire day was 4,176,000, more than five times the 798,000 kids watching English-language broadcast networks.

During the same period, cable had an average audience during the full day of 2,488,000 teens aged 12 to 17, nearly four times the 633,000 teens watching English-language broadcast networks.

Important differences exist, however, between the kids and teen groups. Internet usage among teens is much higher and mobile phone ownership also increases by age.

Recent research by Nickelodeon found that only 9% of children 7 to 9 years old owned a mobile phone, versus 30% in the 10 to 11 group, 52% in the 12 to 13 range and 69% in the 14 to 17 demographic.

Teens are also heavy users of digital media. A survey on cross-platform viewing habits conducted by E! Networks found that 32% of the 13-to-17-year-old demo had watched a TV show online in the last six months, higher than 27% for the 13 to 49 adult population they surveyed.

In addition, 17% of those teens had a video-enabled cell phone (versus 10% overall). About 25% of these teens had used a DVR.

“The big increase has been in online consumption which now exceeds use of DVR or a TiVo,” among teens, said Cyndi McClellan, senior vice president of research and program strategy at Comcast Entertainment Group.

But kids and teens aren’t necessarily the biggest users of online video. About 54% of kids aged 12 to 17 watch online broadband video, according to a 2007 survey by Frank N. Magid Associates.

But Mike Vorhaus, a senior vice president and managing director at Magid, noted that higher levels were found among males aged 18 to 24 (80%), 25 to 34 (64%), 35 to 44 (59%) or even 45 to 54 (60%).

The sweet spot for many types of digital media is actually older, in the 18 to 34 age.

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