Films fail to pull in the on-line punters

Shorter is better on the web

Posted in Telecoms, 12th December 2006 15:23 GMT

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A survey of US internet users shows that while video content is popular, films are not. Only 5% of those who regularly watch video content on the internet have sat through a whole film sitting at their desk.

Amongst the sample of 1, 725 interviewed by API Research nearly 70% of those polled use internet video to watch short-form entertainment, such as news clips or the ballast which fills YouTube: with age being a pretty clear delineator between those two groups.

How many are getting their short-form content from subscription sites of an adult nature isn’t recorded.

Back in the days when interactive TV was going to change everything we talked a lot about the “lean-forward” experience of computer use, against the “lean back” TV-watching pose for which we were creating content.

For those with short memories: selling the web to TV-watchers went badly, so why should selling movies to computer-users fair any better?

Until the computer moves into the living room then selling films over the internet will remain a niche activity, but that’s not going to take long.

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