With online video viewership up, should television worry?

Despite hundreds of channels to watch television on, more Americans are watching videos online than ever, according to a study by the Nielsen Company.

Viewers spent 45% more time on videos and streamed 28% more videos compared to last year, the study found.

“It’s really interesting. People tend to look at web programming versus traditional programming, and I think today that’s a pretty relevant description,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards and the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.

Web programming is still relatively young, Davies said. For example, the Webbys, which awards superior work on the internet, held their inaugural ceremony in 1996 and introduced the Online Film and Video category in 2007. And as the trend accelerates, Davies thinks the Internet may becoming more interactive and engaging than television.

“When you’re watching programming on your computer, you’re connected to the Internet -- you’re connected to other people, you’re connected in real time,” Davies said.

With live shows, many people often find themselves watching while also interacting with other viewers.

But Paste BN television critic Robert Bianco thinks that even as web television becomes more popular, it cannot compete with well-established cable productions.

“Is James Franco producing for YouTube ever going to supplant CBS producing for Warner Brothers? It seems to me that the people who have the money and the power now will find a way to keep the money and the power,” Bianco said, in reference to a number of popular web shows that Franco has produced.

In fact, many of those people are exploring web television. Several primetime comedies, like NBC’s The Office and AMC’s Liza Life Coach, supplement their weekly broadcasts with short webisodes that air exclusively online.

Ultimately, though, Bianco doesn’t consider these original content.

“They’re commercials,” he said. “They’re not spin-offs. They’re produced solely for the purpose of getting you to watch The Office. They’re not meant to supplant The Office.”

For Davies, he agrees with Bianco -- these web shows are meant to engage audiences, and add something to experience, not to replace them.

“The world has had a certain way of watching video programming for a very long time: coming home at night and sitting down in front of your television,” said Davies. “It’s still at the very core of most of the video watched in the world. But it became easier to actually watch videos on the Internet, and we access the Internet generally from our computers. A new type of viewing emerged. . .It’s not taking the place of the traditional way they watch video. It’s just adding on.”

Televisions with Internet connectivity already exist. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and VIZIO all offer models, though they still have a very small market share. Both markets have to converge.

“What we’re seeing online is the creation of a media experience that incorporates what you’re watching and the people you’re watching it with in one screen,” Davies said. “I think that’s the most exciting part of connected televisions. Wherever you are, you might be able to watch Milan AC soccer games with your old pals from high school or college if you all have connected televisions.”

But what’s special about the Internet is innovation.

Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown won the Experimental Webby in 2011. The piece allows users to input their home address, then instantly creates a music video using images from the user’s neighborhood.

Television is still hostile toward such radical innovation, Bianco said. But at the same time, while the Internet promotes experimentation, it lacks the tools to foster elaborate productions.

"If the Internet splits the business up entirely and no one is able to congregate enough people to justify doing a show like Lost, then I don’t know how we’ll ever get a show like Lost,” Bianco said. “And I would be sorry to see that. I’m going to remain hopeful that the Internet becomes a place for innovation and breeding new talent, and television becomes the place where they go to make money.”

Although the growth of Internet video is accelerating, last week’s study stresses that it is still quite small. Only 4.5% of American households have given up traditional cable or satellite access in favor of broadband connections.

“In the grand scheme of things, we’re talking about a half-hour [of streaming] of hours and hours and hours spent on television,” Davies said. “But this was the first time that correlation was shown. Where the industry stands at the moment is. . .if you’re making carriages and stagecoaches and you see the first car invented, you’re not really worried.”

But people like Franco, the members of Arcade Fire and the producers of The Office have started trying to preempt that coming change. And when Internet television became the industry standard, they intend to be thoroughly prepared for transformation.

Rosalie Murphy is a Spring 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.

This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.