Do People Still Watch TV in The Era of Media Coverage?

In the past few years media experts and observers have been talking about the end of television. However, TV is still well and alive in southeast Asia, including Indonesia. General audience research on media consumption in cities of Java and outside Java shows that television is still the main medium used by the 95% people of Indonesia. But that is not the only story that has emerged about TV audiences.

While TV is still relevant, the way audiences watch television content is no longer the same. There are 2 major shifts which have emerged:

1. Byte sized consumption behaviour - audiences' attention span is getting shorter. They no longer have the patience nor the time to sit through anything more than 15 minutes.
2. Multi-screen viewing - audiences incorporate content viewing in their busy lifestyles, anytime, anywhere on any digital devices, with mobile device being the main star.

There are several dynamics that have helped shape this shift in behaviour. It began with digital adoption that has opened the possibility for content to be consumed by anyone, anywhere across geographical, culture and language barriers. This trend not only presents more complexities to the entire media supply chain, but also to the entire audience behaviours.

Media convergence further changes the structure of content offering and the battle of attention for modern audiences. The OTT (Over the Top) offerings has truly impacted what experts called the dynamics of time, space and place. The ever-expanding array of multi-platforms now provides the control to the audience.

Consumers themselves are also increasingly generating content. The barrier to entry for new content creators have been removed with the availability of low cost, high quality production tools and free distribution channels like YouTube. As short-video viewings become the norm amongst the audience, successful individual content producers have been amassing libraries on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

With these changes in the content viewing landscape, it is critical for television players, content providers and advertisers to recognize that the old playbook of retaining and maintaining audience has been thrown out of the window and the traditional way of defining a hit show by singular rating need to be re-evaluated. With the audience in control, storytelling becomes important in order to capture their limited attention span. Understanding what moves and motivates the audience becomes more critical than ever.