A new report says consumer consumption of over-the-top delivered online video will catch up to live broadcast consumption in 
2019 and will become the dominant form of delivery by 2020.
The Diffusion Group, in its report The Economics of Over-the-Top TV Delivery: How Television Networks Can Shift to Online Content Delivery, said the amount of television viewing time by consumers has remained flat, but found that the amount of online video consumed has increased 84 percent from 2008 to 2009.
"The total amount of time spent watching video from all sources, including Pay TV and Internet video, will hold constant during the next 10 years at around 32 hours a week," said Colin Dixon, senior partner and co-author of TDG's new report. "With online video usage accelerating we expect the amount of Internet video watched to eclipse the amount of live broadcast TV around 2020."
Dixon also said Internet and broadcast delivery content will blend "in such a way that consumers will be unaware of which conduit serves which content."
"It is more important than ever that cable and broadcast channels increase their presence online," Dixon said.
A recent study from In-Stat says more than a quarter of U.S. respondents to a survey said they view online video at least once a week on multiple devices, including PCs, Internet TVs and mobile devices. The survey found, though, that online video wasn't replacing conventional Pay TV, it was being used in addition to existing service.
"Consumers want the best of both worlds: Pay TV and Over-the-Top Video," says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. "Nearly 40 percent of consumer broadband household respondents want a combination of linear TV and on-demand TV, and nearly three quarters want to acquire all their video content from their pay TV service provider."
For more:
- see this release
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