On Demand: Home TV Set Still King

New York – The traditional living room television set appears to still be holding its grip on the U.S. viewing public, but how pay TV customers utilize other screens like tablets, smartphones and laptop computers, is just as much a factor of where they are as who they are, according to a panel of industry pros at the Multichannel News On Demand Summit Thursday.

“TV is still king,” said Vubiquity chief marketing officer Laurie Lawrence at a panel discussion entitled “The Consumer Roundtable: Experiencing On Demand,” and moderated by Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner. She added that according to Vubiquity research, about 85% of TV viewing is still done on the primary screen, the television set in the home. About 10% of that viewing is time-shifted and 7% to 9% of viewing is on devices like tablets and smartphones.

But BuddyTV CEO and founder Andy Liu said a lot of that depends on where the viewer is at the time. If they are at home, they tend to watch the family TV set, but he added that if the viewer is streaming content, they tend to do that on tablets or smartphones no matter where they are because the authentication process is easier on smaller devices than on the TV.

For the full story go to Multichannel.com.