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ost people currently prefer to watch “must-see TV” at the time of broadcast, the signs are that this will soon change.

But there are strong pointers to a not-too-distant future where time-shifting is the default behaviour for most viewers, most of the time, and live viewing is mainly reserved for event TV.

On-demand is seen more as a catch-up facility, with 70 per cent of on-demand users claiming they only use on-demand services to catch up on programmes they have missed. In addition, the availability of on-demand services on other screens is key to many, with 47 per cent of on-demand users stating that they often use on-demand services to watch programmes when they are not in front of a TV set.

While brand marketers are enthusiastic about trying to engage second-screen viewers, much of their focus right now is on Facebook and Twitter rather than standalone second-screen apps.

As a result, these apps are looking to reposition themselves to attract more use and brands

The idea is to provide users with an experience that they can engage with throughout the day related to their favorite TV shows, whether they want to catch up on the latest gossip about a show, chat about the latest episode or engage with the app while watching a show.

TV Guide rolled out an app to see what’s playing, watch whatever’s on, and also tweet, post, and blog about it. And that Apple is rumored to be releasing a mini-TV tablet to enable an iOS-style second-screen experience.

SimulTV’s solution is to combine both screens, right on the web. So your football game, Twitter conversations, Facebook messages, online search, and text and voice chat with others on SimulTV who are watching the same thing as you.

by this summer, SimulTV promises to have more than 100 channels, including ”top channels” from Latin America, China, Japan and Europe, plus 5,000 video-on-demand titles. The service is HD-quality, with picture-in-picture for the truly ADHD social TV aficionados, and according to the company, takes only half the bandwidth of typically required.

The Golden Triangle will one day soon engender a shared experience across the three screens, but for the meantime, a resurgence of crowd-powered demand for relevance and personalization is leading a groundswell of change and evolution within each medium.

The result of the social effect and the integrated social hooks inherent in today’s online networks will only inspire a genre of connectivity and interaction as programming will eventually feature creative triggers that engender desired responses and action. The same is true for any event, whether it’s on air, live, or on the big screen.

The water cooler or social effect is only one part of defining a more meaningful experience over time. It is culturally significant as it connects people around common interests in real-time all over the web using events as our participation hub and as our magnet for convergence.

Still, you might say a revolution is brewing in the living room — and this one will be televised. It portends not only a change in the TV viewing experience but also poses a threat to cable and satellite TV distributors. Even network executives' notions about scheduling — how positioning a new show adjacent to a popular program in the evening lineup to drive ratings — look anachronistic at a time when Nielsen estimates that 47% of all American households have DVRs and can watch recorded shows whenever they choose, and 55% of broadband homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet, according to market researcher the Diffusion Group.

Concerns about how to reach this group known as the "never connecteds" and count their viewing in a show's ratings adds to a list of headaches that include slumping prime-time broadcast TV ratings and the flight of advertisers to cable.

these smart TVs may look dated compared with what Silicon Valley giant Intel has in store for later this year, not to mention whatever Apple Inc. is planning with its mysterious but hotly anticipated flat-screen TV.

“For movies and retailers, time-shifting can be a concern,” says Starcom’s Bowe. “That is why live TV is interesting to a lot of TV advertisers. Advertisers are demanding immediacy. Amassing an audience on a particular night is important.” Combating ad skipping empowered by the DVR is a bigger issue for TV stations than it is for network TV.

Advertisers typically buy local TV using Nielsen’s live-only or live-plus-same-day program ratings. Network TV is bought on C3 commercial ratings, which includes live viewing and three days of DVR playback. That means local TV advertisers pay for viewers who fast-forward through their commercials.

Live TV and social media were made for each other. In 2013, 36 million people in the United States sent 990 million Tweets about TV shows they were watching live, according to Nielsen SocialGuide. Moreover, 84% of people who have smartphones or computer tablets use those devices while watching TV.

Sky Italia teamed up with IBM Data and Analytics, creating program schedules and on-demand content based on TV shows subscribers were actively discussing on social media.

Sky Italia was able not just to customize its programming, but also to come up with highly targeted, personalized marketing campaigns.

The Walt Disney Co. last week unveiled perhaps the most radical tablet-related development, saying that its new Disney Junior series, Sheriff Callie’s Wild West, will stream to tablets before it ever hits the linear feed.

Thus far, the initial viewer-pattern data has been encouraging. “In the past year and a half, we’ve seen video viewing just skyrocket across mobile,” said Beau Teague, Cartoon Network’s senior director of user experience. “Our mobile viewing has surpassed even viewing on the desktop site.”

Some of that has to do with the weirdly obsessive way in which younger children (say, ages 2-8) tend to sample on-demand content. “We definitely see a lot of repeat viewing,” Teague said. “Kids will return to favorite episodes and favorite clips. They’ll seek out whatever the catchphrase was from last night’s episode of Adventure Time.”

Significantly, 14% of consumers used their tablets to search for content and engage in social media directly related to the television program they were watching. 

The findings present an opportunity for broadcast and cable networks to interact with consumers much more readily and immediately than they have in the past,

Among devices, the PC/laptop is still the top device used for these “over-the-top” (OTT) services with 65% of respondents using them to watch video content (up from 59% last year). About a third (31%) said they did the same on a mobile phone (up from 24%), while 22% said they used a tablet (up from 14%). Tablets and PCs are the preferred devices to watch longer-form video (such as movies or TV shows), according to the survey. 

A mélange of TV resource apps are getting together to help each other, and their users. Dijit, Thuuz, Tomorrowish, IVA and Simple.TV are partnering to integrate their products and services. The theory seems to be that they are stronger working together, rather than alone. Given the non-competitive positioning of each, this could be a boon for TV viewers. First a quick summary of what each of the companies does. Dijit’s NextGuide helps TV viewers discover new TV shows and remember to watch them. Thuuz provides real-time sports updates helping fans tune to the most interesting game on TV at any given time. Tomorrowish let’s viewers watching a show or event on-demand replay the social media buzz from the first broadcast. Internet Video Archive (IVA) specializes in providing show and movie trailers. Simple.TV provides live TV and network DVR services.