by Dave Zornow
Cable Avails, October 1988

TV researchers are trying to heed the old adage, "those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it." Once upon a time, network radio reigned as the dominant mass media until it was dethroned by TV. The rise of television in the fifties marked the fastest growth of any mass media the world had ever seen. That is, until the World Wide Web came along.

Over the past year or so, TV and online -- specifically America Online -- have been waging a war of words regarding whether or not the Internet is making a dent in TV viewing time. According to a Nielsen study commissioned by AOL, TV households with online access watch "markedly less television than non-subscribing households." America Online cites drops of 16 percent in early fringe, six percent in Monday-Friday prime and nine percent in late fringe.

AOL's claims make seem to make sense. Everyone's talking about the Internet; every major marketer and media source has a presence on the Web and more and more "average" households seem to be going online every day. The problem, according to NBC's director of social and developmental research, is that there aren't any facts to support this conclusion.

"There’s no evidence that TV viewing is declining as a result of Internet usage, but everyone wants to believe it is," says Horst Stipp. "Internet usage is taking time away from various things. For example, people may not talk on the phone as much if they have email as an alternative way to communicate," he says.

Although the Internet is a mass media that carries advertising like TV, Stipp believes there is a fundamental difference in how each media is used. "TV is passive while the Internet is more active. They don’t necessarily overlap." Stipp explains the AOL findings as being demographically driven, not influenced by the Internet. The kinds of households who are using the Internet -- homes with upscale and technically savvy viewers -- are traditionally lighter TV viewing households, he says.

Will the Internet succeed at the expense of TV, or can the new media prosper without cannibalizing the old? Forrester Research's director of quantitative research Shelley Morrisette says there is evidence that people are multi-tasking while they are on the Web. "Internet users say they do a variety of things while they are online. Twenty-five percent say they have watched TV, 50 percent say they have read a newspaper or magazine and nine percent say they have listened to the radio at one time or another while using the Web," he says. Morrisette says the Internet may have has affected the TV viewing of the most recent Americans online, but he confirms that subscribers who have been connected for several years haven't been impacted as much because they never watched a lot of TV, anyway.

Sure the cable business is tough. It has always been competitive and each year seems to get a little tougher. But consider the plight of the people on the other side of the table. While cable has been growing, the Internet has exploded, FOX has become a force and UPN and the WB have become players, Meanwhile, agencies have merged and spun off their media buying departments. How would you like to be a buyer or planner who has to keep track of all of those changes?

The Media Research Club of Chicago dedicated their 1998 Symposium to this subject. "The Best of Times, the Worst of Times," was not about Dickens, but about data overload and the future of media research and planning.

"Today, the tasks are different but far more challenging," says Jayne Spittler, senior vice president of Starcom Media Services. "We have new responsibilities and we have to learn new skills. Yet research staffs are now smaller than they were they once were." Spittler readily admits that agencies have brought some of these problems on themselves. "We now have the data, but we don’t have the decision support systems to make use of the data. We told suppliers we need everything, and sometimes the worst thing that can happen is when you get what you ask for."

Russell Booth remembers a time when ratings were larger, deliveries were predictable and there were fewer -- and easier -- media choices. But the managing director of research and technology for MediaCom says planners are trying to cope with new media challenges using old software systems. "The tool box is getting rusty. Today's consumer world is more complicated than it used to be," says Booth. The increasing number of options -- and the necessity to buy more to get the same media weight -- is putting an increasing strain on the agency community. "The number of commercial units we buy has doubled over the last five years. This change has threatened the planners' world."

Both Booth and Spittler say agencies need better decision support tools to cope with the data deluge. "We need better tools – better precision," says Booth. Examples he cites are better target marketing tools which include market break geographies and more detailed information about audience involvement with programming to counter the effect of commercial clutter.

Spittler says that agency researchers need to rise up to the new challenges or they will become irrelevant in the future. "We need a revolution – hopefully without a guillotine. We need to get off the fence and decide what we are supposed to be doing on behalf of our clients. It means not giving 17 reasons why something can't be down, but finding a way to get it done. If we don’t, someone else will."  ##

Dave Zornow is President/TNG Research, a media research consultancy and applications development company that works with media sellers and research providers.

This article was originally published in October 1998 by Cable Avails magazine.

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