TORONTO – More Canadians now catch their favourite TV shows on-line than by personal video recorders and video-on-demand combined.
According to results from the Q4 edition of Digital Life Canada, Solution Research Group’s quarterly trend survey, 50% of on-line Canadians watched TV on-line at some point in the past, and 25% said they did so in the past week. Only 13% said that they watched a show on a PVR or cable on-demand (10%) in the past week.
But most on-line viewing is still catch-up, the research determined, with 53% of respondents saying that they watched on-line most recently because they missed a show that they liked. But the convenience of on-line is a strong factor now for 37%.
For young Canadians, PVRs and on-demand are becoming the technology of their parents’ generation. Twice as many young Canadians use their PCs to watch TV content than PVRs and VOD combined. Among those over the age of 30, however, VOD and PVRs edge out on-line viewing.
News is still the biggest driver to major network TV sites in Canada, though show streaming is increasingly popular. 42% of on-line Canadians cite the reason for their last visit to one of globaltv.com, ctv.ca or cbc.ca was to check the news. But visits to watch full TV shows on network sites is on the rise: 23% of visitors to Global go there to stream a full-episode show; 13% of visitors to CTV visit to stream a full show and 9% for CBC.
While most on-line video indicators are trending up, the on-line portal initiatives from Rogers and Bell/TMN are not yet well known or used, the findings continued. In both cases, only one-in-three of their respective target customers have heard, read or seen something about these portals. And in most cases, customers have not yet taken the initiative to try out these online services.
In other Digital Life Canada findings:
– Most Canadian consumers believe that the future of TV is on the Internet but they are not about to give up cable or satellite TV yet. Three-in-five believe that all TV shows will be on the Internet someday, and a majority say they’d choose the Internet over cable if they had to give one up. But despite these sentiments, only 7% would drop cable if they could get a comparable service from Apple or similar. Clearly both options are filling complementary needs among consumers at the moment.
– HD sets, HD boxes and PVRs each hit milestones in the fourth quarter of 2009. 6 million households, (or nearly half of all Canadian households), now have an HD set, doubling from 3 million just over two years ago. HD boxes and PVRs hit the 3 million and 2 million household milestones, respectively. The structural issues around HD penetration persist, however – just over half of HD sets are driven by an HD box and this continues to represent an area of opportunity for cable and satellite TV providers.
These findings come from SRG’s independent Digital Life Canada syndicated study, which is based on quarterly interviews with 1,000 on-line Canadians aged 12 and older. The Q4 2009 research was conducted in December 2009.
