Internet Connection: Serving up television but without the good old TV set

The “stupid computer” is a repeated target of the dimwitted office manager Michael Scott on The Office.

The “stupid computer” is a repeated target of the dimwitted office manager Michael Scott on The Office.

But the show itself may be motivating viewers to put down their remote controls and pick up their laptops. When the fourth season of The Office, an NBC comedy, had its premiere in September, one in five viewings was on a computer screen instead of a television. The episode attracted a broadcast audience of 9.7 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was also streamed from the Web 2.7 million times in one week, the executive producer, Greg Daniels, said.

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The Office is on the leading edge of a sharp shift in entertainment viewing that was thought to be years away: watching television episodes on a computer screen is now a common activity for millions of consumers. “It has become a mainstream behavior in an extraordinarily quick time,” said Alan Wurtzel, the head of research for NBC, which is owned by General Electric and Vivendi. “It isn’t just the province of college students or generation Y-ers. It spans all ages.” A study in October by Nielsen Media Research found that one in four Internet users had streamed full-length television episodes online in the last three months, including 39 per cent of people ages 18 to 34 and, more surprisingly, 23 per cent of those 35 to 54.

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“I think what we’re seeing right now is a great cultural shift of how this country watches television,” said Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, a Fox animated comedy that ranks among the most popular online shows. “Forty years ago, new technology changed what people watched on TV as it migrated to color. Now new technology is changing where people watch TV, literally omitting the actual television set.”

Although people are watching their shows, the networks are loath to release data about how many people are watching TV shows online and how often. The reason? Possibly because Internet viewers are worth only a fraction of the advertising dollars of television viewers.

“The four and a half billion we make on broadcast is never going to equate to four and a half billion online,” said Quincy Smith, the president of CBS Interactive.

The most popular television shows tend to be the most-viewed online as well. While the doctors and nurses of the hit ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy look a little pixelated on a computer monitor, episodes of the show have been streamed more than 26 million times on ABC.com in the last six months, adding the equivalent of two full ratings points to each telecast. Heroes, Ugly Betty, CSI, House and Gossip Girl are among the other online hits, analysts say.

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Just how many shows are being streamed is unclear because there is no widely recognised version of the Nielsen TV ratings for the Internet yet. Regardless of the content, the shift is forcing the networks to rethink the long-held axioms of network schedulers and advertisers.

In an address in January to television executives in Las Vegas, Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, noted that NBC.com had measured more than half a billion video streams in just over a year. “Our challenge with all these ventures is to effectively monetize them so that we do not end up trading analog dollars for digital pennies,” Zucker said, calling it the No 1 challenge for the industry.