Viewers go online for TV gossip

1st July 2008

People are increasingly turning to the Internet for their television viewing, new research by The Nielsen Company for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) shows.

Online television viewers use the net for finding background details about actors and actresses (39 per cent), finding information about a show and its characters (37 per cent), viewed previews (38 per cent), seeing a behind-the-scenes clip (27 per cent) and read or viewed an interview with a cast member (26 per cent), according to PR Newswire.

While 94 per cent of adults who subscribe to cable or satellite TV services prefer to watch television the traditional way, one third of broadband users said they had seen at least one programme on the Internet.

Out of those who watched videos online, 87 per cent watched programmes directly from a TV network website and 82 per cent used the net to find a television programme they had missed.

In March, 27 million people watched more than 3.5 billion videos online in the UK, according to comScore.

Video-sharing site YouTube accounted for nearly half of all videos views on the Internet.