A new survey is reporting a 55% drop in the number of consumers who say they prefer to watch TV shows on the traditional television set.
Accenture’s 2017 Digital Consumer Survey found four in ten consumers (42%) said they would rather view TV shows on a laptop or desktop, up from 32% in last year’s survey. 13% said they prefer watching TV shows on their smartphones, compared with 10% last year.
26,000 consumers in 26 countries completed online questionnaires for the survey that continues a trend that has emerged over the last four years. As recently as 2014, the survey revealed that nearly two-thirds (65%) of consumers preferred the TV set for viewing TV shows.
“The dominance of the TV set as the undisputed go-to entertainment device is ending,” said Gavin Mann, global managing director for Accenture’s broadcast business. “While a great number of people still watch plenty of TV shows on TV sets, our research uncovers a rapid acceleration in their preference for viewing on other digital devices — especially laptops, desktops and smartphones.”
The most-recent findings, summarized in a new Accenture report Winning Experiences in the New Video World, show that only one in five consumers (19%) now prefer to watch sports games on their TVs, down from 38% in the prior-year survey.
“Driving this rapid shift in consumer preferences is the growing convenience, availability and quality of more personalized and compelling content on laptop and desktop personal computers and smartphones,” Mann added. “The massive and accelerating push by communications and media companies to provide ubiquitous content — TV everywhere including over-the-top — has empowered consumers to access high-quality content across multiple devices.”
While TV shows are moving to laptops and desktops, the smart phone is becoming the preferred device for watching short video clips. In the most-recent survey, more than one-third (41%) of consumers said they would rather view these clips on their mobile, a substantial increase from 28% last year. In contrast, the number of consumers who said they would rather watch video clips on their laptops and desktops dropped slightly, from 47% to 44% over the last year, while the number who said they prefer to view these clips on their TV sets dropped even more, from 16% to only 5%.
