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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

May, 2010

Watching People Watching TV

The Economist discusses the reality of TV consumption, revealing that people underestimate how much live television they watch.
Good article from the Economist about the realities of TV consumption:
In surveys [people] almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form. In particular, they underestimate their consumption of live television. One of Ms Pearson's subjects, a 27-year-old man, claimed to watch recorded television 90% of the time. In fact he watched live TV 69% of the time. He was probably not so much fibbing as misinterpreting the question. When asked how he watched television, he gave an answer that described his behaviour when he was alone, and thus did not have to compromise. But most of the time he watched with other people.
The article also points out how many "disruptive" TV ideas have missed a basic premise of how we consume: With other people. I can't help but feel like the current wave of "social TV" applications that aim to allow me to connect with my friends while watching shows will suffer the same fate. The reality of the situation is that the vast majority of my TV time is already spent consuming it socially with the person sitting next to me on the couch.
May 16, 2010
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.