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Factoid: 21.6% of pay-TV subscribers have downloaded their operators TV-Everywhere app to their connected device. Of those, just 30% use it more than once a week.

“Authentication is a barrier to usage. I bet half the audience doesn’t know what their user name and password is.

“It’s not unreasonable to assume that roughly, essentially we charge customers 20 cents a viewing hour. That is a staggeringly good value by any measure.” Rob Marcus, TWC “I’m concerned we are reaching a tipping point. Where we begin to price some customers out of the market” Jerald Kent, Chairman & CEO, Suddenlink Communications

With the rapid adoption of the tablet as a content device, interest in streaming content has nearly doubled in the past year (from 17% in 2012 to 32% in 2013). Consumers have also expressed more interest in consuming programming on different devices and from different sources. (Indeed, younger Millennials spent more time watching content on non-television devices, even when that content was originally created for television, Belson says.)

“This is the first year that consumers have started to decouple the notion that content from a particular source [must be viewed on] a different device,”

Only 6% of consumers who had pay-TV services said they were considering giving up the services in the next year, according to the survey.

SVOD providers are particularly problematic for broadcasters and their advertising partners, because they hurt ad supported television in a number of ways: Consumers with SVOD subscriptions replace time spent watching ad supported television with ad free SVOD watching With so much of online video viewing time spent watching ad free, those quality ad opportunities that are available are more expensive to buy Consumers get a decreased tolerance for advertising as they grow used to seeing content uninterrupted.

U.S. ad agencies spent 2% less on broadcast TV networks in the 4th quarter of 2014 and 16% less on national cable TV. The company also found that, if you exclude the Olympics, broadcast ad revenue would have declined 2% for the full year (it increased 4.1% when the Olympics are included.)

online originals are growing prodigiously and a good proportion of that inventory will provide advertising opportunities. For example, Alex Carloss, YouTube’s head of original programming, announced the site would be funding more original programming in the same way it did in 2012.

In its second season, Snapchat's first original program, Good Luck America, averaged over 5 million unique viewers per episode, Axios has learned. The season totaled 29 million total unique viewers globally, 45% more than the prior season. Almost 75% of those viewers are under the age of 25, and over 90% are under age 35.

Adds new digital viewers: Twitter provided an average of 6% incremental reach to TV (meaning it expanded its audience with viewers that are digital-only) for target demographics.

Reaches a young audience: Twitter saw an average of 25% additional digital reach to TV programs amongst adults 18-24.

87% of consumers are splitting their attention between the TV and their laptops, smartphones and tablet computers. Here's the kicker: Although such distracted viewing is common, fewer people are using these second screens to interact with the applications designed specifically for the TV programs they're watching.

Although these so-called "companion" applications are popular with some viewers, they don't resonate with most consumers,

47% of viewers have used their portable devices to learn more about the TV shows or movies they're watching, or the actors appearing on screen. But they are turning to established sources, including IMDb, Wikipedia and social networks, for such information, NPD found.

Among the most common is shopping for a product seen in an ad, by 19.4% of TV watchers who engage in second-screen activities.

That’s behind only learning about an actor/actress (29.8%) and learning about the show/movie (23.1%). The researchers note that shopping for products is most prevalent among laptop users and consumers in the 35-49 age group, and that “converting viewers into impulse shoppers has big potential impact for advertisers.”

Not too far behind the top tier of activities is discussing a show on a social networking site, cited by 14.8% of respondents. That’s a figure worth watching closely – as social TV has the potential to increase engagement. A just-released neuroscience study from MEC and Channel Seven in Australia discovered that interacting with social media while watching TV drove a 9% increase in program engagement among study participants, and that second-screen interaction aided recall of specific elements of the broadcast.

provides Twitter users a directory of live tweet streams for an event or broadcast — from political debates to press conferences to reality TV shows.

team would pick from a roundup of "qualified content producers" — such as writers for newspapers, magazines and blogs in teams' respective hometowns and each list would feature about 10-25 live Tweeters per event

Users can also mix and match their own custom stream of tweets highlighted by Chirp Guide or the site's users

sports (31%) and reality (17%) are the primary genres generating social TV buzz, combining to account for about half of social TV conversations between January 1 and November 30 2012.

The CTAM study also finds that viewers are more likely to talk about shows the next day or after (83%) or right after the show (75%). (The study was not limited to social media conversations.)

NBC was easily the most engaging network of the year, with the Olympics a big reason why.

If you can take [our analytics service] and not just do it about [one event like] the Super Bowl but do it for all TV shows … now you have this comprehensive view into how TV is driving engagement.”

Bluefin drills down into specific moments on television, be they advertisements, actual shows or what have you. And Roy says it can grab a larger, more representative slice of the Twitter users tweeting about a specific moment than, say, a hashtag can (as many people may be talking about an event without using a hashtag).

Bluefin runs what’s called an affinity analysis, which lets the company figure out “preexisting affinities between TV program audiences and brands.” Moreover, Bluefin can flesh out a profile of a particular Twitter user tweeting in a specific moment, based on that person’s tweeting history.

Social network users are 27.3% more likely to say that the sites are important for making entertainment-related decisions than not (56% vs. 44%),

Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to follow actors and actresses (41% vs. 32%), sports figures (25% vs. 17%), reality TV stars (23% vs. 16%), and journalists and reporters (15% vs. 9%). By contrast, Facebook members are more likely to follow companies and brands (49% vs. 37%), sports teams (30% vs. 22%), TV shows (49% vs. 30%), and movies (43% vs. 25%).

Roughly 4 in 5 respondents said they always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching TV, while 41% reported tweeting about the show they are watching. In fact, of those posting about TV shows, roughly three-quarters did so while watching programs live, and 51% said they post while watching to feel connected to others who might be watching.

29% of social TV viewers engage in social TV primarily "to advise my network of friends and let them know what's good and bad." Women are more likely than men to share such opinions (36% vs. 21%).23% of social TV viewers engage in social TV primarily "to be connected with others who have similar television program likes and dislikes."

We use social media primarily for four purposes: 1) engaging with fans and encouraging that two-way conversation; 2) driving tune-in to our programming; 3) driving traffic to our owned-and-operated fansites; and 4) gathering insights about fan preferences and reactions that we can share internally with our network marketing, communications and production partners.

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.

MTV uses its Facebook presence as a kind of online promo aggregator – a buffet with bite-sized appetizers delivered from all over MTV’s extensive stable of blogs, niche websites, TV programming and movies.

Almost three months after striking a deal to acquire second screen TV app specialist GetGlue, i.TV has "retired" the GetGlue brand while introducing a new brand and social TV app called "tvtag" that will enable users to share, comment on and react to what they’re watching.

Tvtag will aggregate the i.TV second screen audiences from GetGlue, DirecTV and Nintendo (via the Nintendo TVii feature that’s baked into the Wii U console and Wii U GamePad). i.TV CEO Brad Pelo said the move will give tvtag access to an aggregate, potential reach of about 10 million users.

The new app replaces the GetGlue platform with one that  lets users “tag” moments within individual TV shows and sporting events with comments, doodles and memes. Keeping some of the old GetGlue features in place, tvtag will still let users “check in” to a show to unlock digital stickers, while also integrating user polls tied to TV content and the ability to share show-related info on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

But negative comments about the feature continued. A more recent factor was the highly publicized revelations about surveillance activities by the National Security Agency. “What pushed me over the hump was the whole NSA sort of thing,” Huggers says. “I don’t want to go there.”

Not that Intel doesn’t plan to offer plenty of ways to personalize the TV-watching experience. For example, the company cites a Personal Profiles feature that helps switch between individuals using the device, so they have access to relevant content and recommendations. Another option lets users add favorites so they have access to recently watched shows, with the ability to instantly pick up in the program where they left off.

Still another feature, called Spotlight, integrates recommendations based on what’s trending in social media as well as curating content based on a user’s age, interest and time of watching, the company says.