Will the internet kill TV?

A recent research that has been published in the last few weeks and was mentioned yesterday in the 8hands blog, states that 70% of Americans ages 15-34 would prefer checking their personal MySpace page than watching TV. It’s not a good sign to the TV industry, and it’s not the only one.

Social networks users, and especially MySpace ones, are spending 11 hours a week on net and only 9.4 hours watching TV. By the end of this year, 20% of the American households will have TIVO – meaning they are skipping advertising. YouTube traffic continues to grow during this quarter, despite part of the major companies forcing them to remove their content. According to Alexa, it’s the fourth site in the world wide web.

In addition, Speedbit has just launched in the last month a new download accelerator offering the ability to download full movie files in about 20 minutes. That’s five times faster than the regular speed. This clients’ downloads are growing and growing. P2P downloads are responsible for more than 50% of the world’s internet traffic. Not to mention Joost, that offers cable TV (still with a low quality content…) on the net.

Combining this information altogether, it seems like the internet (with TIVO) is going to harm TV as it harms the music industry.

The new generation prefers the internet: downloading content for free, more easily and in less time, or watching it on YouTube or Joost. If they reach TV they skip the commercials.

The TV industry should change their model. Otherwise, they might suffer large loss of their current revenues before the end of the decade.

k.