Survey: TV quickly losing ground to mobile

A new survey shows live television viewing continues to decline as voters migrate to watching streamed content on tablets and smartphones.

The reason for the switch? Viewers want to watch video content “on their own terms,” the researchers wrote. “There’s now little doubt that live TV is losing ground to new technologies.”

The poll found that less than half of voters now say live TV is their primary way to watch video content — and some 30 percent say they haven’t watched live TV over the past week.  

“We’ve reached the tipping point,” the researchers wrote.

The poll, conducted of 800 likely voters in January by Public Opinion Strategies and Global Strategy Group (MOE is plus/minus 3.46 percent), was paid for by Google, digital firms Targeted Victory and Well & Lighthouse. Read the full survey here.

It found even many of those watching live TV do so with a table or smartphone — 41 percent of respondents said they used a “second screen” at least occasionally.

For Republicans, there was an edge in the number of respondents who said they visited YouTube in the last week with 54 percent saying they went to the video streaming site. That compared with 49 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Independents. 

And for the first time, the average voters spends less time (10.2 hours) watching live TV and than watching “non-live” TV (12.1 hours). Moreover, Independents, Hispanics and moderates — groups both parties target — are the least likely to be watching live TV other than sports. 

The researchers asked if voters planned to switch from live TV to streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and AmazonPrime and 60 percent said “yes.” Overwhelming, the respondents said, that switch would happen in the next two years.

That means “campaigns have to write budgets that reflect how people are watching video,” Targeted Victory co-founder Zac Moffatt told Politico.