Parks Points

Once you decide what program you want to watch on TV, the next decision is when are you going to watch it. It’s becoming more and more likely that you are going to watch it on your terms, rather than at a time that a network has determined it will air. In less than six years, live TV broadcast viewing has dropped from 62% of TV set consumption time to only 42%.

Time shifting when viewing video content on a television set has been around for decades. At first people had to record TV network content onto a bulky VCR tape. This process was eventually displaced by the DVR, which made content recording much easier. As the DVR approaches its 20th birthday, it is still a significant factor in the consumption of video content on the TV, and households that have DVR capabilities use them regularly. However, this category of viewing is not expected to grow in the future.

Internet video, in its many forms, is the present and the future for time shifting content on a TV set. A near majority of U.S. broadband households connect a TV set to the Internet. For many forms of content, watching it through either a dedicated video subscription service or a video service from a TV network (e.g., CBS All Access) is much more convenient. It is a good arrangement for consumers to be able to view video content on the biggest screen in the household, on their time and not a time predetermined by a TV network.