Watch It With a MantelMount. But What Are We Watching?

Here at MantelMount, we’re obviously interested in letting you know how much more enjoyable your TV viewing can be using the best Pull Down™ TV Mount on the market.  With a variety of features not found in any other vertically-moving mount, such as Adjustable Stops, Auto-Straightening, and Heat Sensing Handles, we know that MantelMount can help create the most entertaining and neck pain-free TV watching experience. 

But we’re also here to inform and educate you about thought-provoking tidbits connected to the television world, and here’s one that we think fits that category.  It has to do with changing television viewing habits, and while the numbers are interesting, they should hardly come as a surprise.

According to an article on the website Marketing Profs, entitled “How Television and Video Viewing Habits Are Changing, the share of weekly video viewing time spent watching linear television (i.e., TV not on-demand) has decreased 16% since 2010.  This is according to recent research from Ericsson, a world leader in communications technology.  The report was based on data from a survey of 30,000 consumers age 16-69 in 24 countries. 

Conversely, the analysis found that the share of weekly video viewing hours spent watching on-demand TV series, movies, and other programs has increased by a whopping 50% since 2010.  What’s more, the share of video viewing hours spent watching on-demand short video clips has jumped 86% since 2010.  In total, on-demand video watching now accounts for 43% of all weekly viewing time.

What’s the takeaway from these numbers?  It’s quite simple: more and more, we’re watching what we want, not what the major networks decide to show us.  Gone are the good old days of the three networks, and primetime television.  After dinner, the entire family hunkered down in front of the set and consumed the comedy, drama and variety shows that comprised the “video content” of the day.  There wasn’t a choice as to what viewers watched; they watched what was on.  Some of it was tremendously entertaining; some of it was painfully unwatchable.  But it was what the networks produced, so we watched it and said “thank you.”

That’s all changed.  So-called “linear television” still exists, but it has been usurped by cable-based, on-demand fare, much of which is not only superbly written and produced (watch the Emmys and see how many network shows are winning awards these days), but available whenever the viewer wants to watch it.  Further, there is such an overwhelming volume of quality programming on cable and on demand, that there is always something good to watch.  A variety of quality choices.  At the times you want it.  Used to be you watched Batman on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m.  If you missed it, you missed it.  Now, you can watch old episodes of “Batman” on demand at 3 a.m. 

There is clearly an age difference in how these new viewing habits are skewed.  Consumers age 16-34 spend almost 2.5 hours more each week watching streamed on-demand user generated content (UGC) than do consumers age 35-69.  In contrast, consumers age 16-34 spend almost four hours less each week than consumers age 35-69 watching linear television.

As far as the dramatic 86% jump in video-clip viewing, we have Facebook, YouTube, and other such outlets to thank.  If you have a child under the age of 19, you can walk into their room at almost any time and see them checking out video clips on any number of subjects, from extreme sports to pranks to rap-artist rants, and everything in between.  And it’s not just the youngsters doing it – how many of us watched April the giraffe for almost two months, waiting for her to give birth to her baby?  Much of this content is perfect for our lifestyle – it’s short, it’s fast, and it fits our increasingly decreasing attention span. 

There is still every reason to get a MantelMount Pull Down TV Mount™ to help increase the enjoyment of your television viewing experience.  It’s just that the times when you pull it down – and what you watch when you do pull it down – have changed dramatically. 

Maybe we’ll have to create a MantelMount for your phone, too.

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