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The Internet's arrival in American homes has been bad news for the boob tube. Nearly two out of three Web users who log 10 hours or more online a week say they're reaching for the remote less often, according to a survey of 4,113 adults by Stanford University's Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. Even among light users, online for less than an hour a week, one out of four claims to be watching less television as a result.
Will interactive TV bring those wired consumers back to the couch? Business Week Online's Jennifer Gill recently caught up with Lutz Erbring, co-author of the Stanford report and a professor of mass-communication studies at the Free University of Berlin. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
Q: Why has the Internet cut into our TV time?
A: [Watching TV] is a way of passing time in a relaxed and entertaining way, so you can always cut back a little bit on that if you've got something else to do. [But] using the Internet is much more active than being a couch potato. You can't really do it and watch television at the same time, even from the corner of your eye. The younger, MTV generation, who are used to this
sort of semi-attention/quick-cut kind of consumption, sometimes tell us that they watch television at the same time. But we have not really tracked down the specifics to the point of knowing what the "same time" means. Does it mean [watching TV] while you're waiting for a download or does it mean something more?
Q: Such as whether they are going online because of something they are watching on TV?
A: People will go online for backup, just like they use it for newspaper backup. Lots of newspapers a few years ago started saying, "More details at our Web site," and people will, if they want more details, go there. Our Internet study found that people have cut down on newspaper reading time -- although it is not really in competition for the same minutes of time. Some
people have simply shifted some of their newspaper reading to news that's available on the Web. They still read the news, they just read it elsewhere. But television, of course, is a real competition for time.
Q: Why do consumers go online?
A: The killer application is e-mail. For over 90% of the people, [e-mail] is the first thing they do [online], and it's what they do the most. No. 2 is various kinds of information searches -- whether it's flight schedules or product searches. That feeds into changes in shopping patterns, because people also tell us they spend less time driving and less time in shopping centers. You used to go to the store to look at the washing machine and check it out and compare prices -- now you can do that on the Net, much more effectively, much more efficiently. The only trip they will actually make to the store will be to make a purchase for something that they've already researched on the Net.
Q: Say you're watching television, and a car commercial comes on. You're in the market for a new car. If you click on an icon at the bottom of the screen, it will automatically bring you to the carmaker's Web site so you can get more specifics. Since consumers are already going to the
Internet for product research, would this be a way for interactive TV to work?
A: I don't think people will do that on TV because they're watching the show. If they were to go after the ad, they would miss the rest of the show. After the show is over, they may go to their Web terminal and contact the Web site that was given on the bottom of the television screen.
The technology is there to combine the devices. But nothing that we've [seen] suggests that people want to mix those activities. When they're watching TV, they want to relax. They don't want to do any research. They want to put their legs up, eat potato chips, and watch with members of the family. They're not going to interrupt that to do some other stuff. They may use a
television device -- WebTV or the equivalent -- to [go on] the Web, but in a different time slot and when they're in a different mood.
Q: Will Internet access at home become as common as having a phone?
A: It's an interesting question of whether we're going to hit the diffusion rate of telephones -- which means, almost universal. I'm somewhat doubtful of that because of the literacy requirements. All of this takes reading and writing and so on -- it's not the same as just yakking. [Household Internet penetration] will probably come close -- 70%, 75%.
The socio-economic deterrents of access have been [diminishing] considerably. What we found in our research that is more interesting is that once people are on the Net -- once they're on the other side of the digital divide -- they don't differ in what they do by socio-economic criteria such as ethnic origin or income.
Q: How has the Internet affected our work habits?
A: There has been a lot of talk about telecommuting and people working out of their home and no longer needing offices. Somewhat to our surprise, that did not seem to happen to a significant extent in our study. Yes, [Internet users] spend more time working at home. But, no, they don't spend any less time working at the office. People not only spend some portion of their Internet use at home for business purposes, they also spend some of the time they use the Internet at their job for personal purposes. They read the newspaper or make travel reservations or research something that they are interested in at their place of work. The boundary between personal and job is being permeated from both sides.
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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