The Internet on TV - statistics on television viewing, online usage, and on attitudes towards WebTV

American Demographics, May, 1997 by Diane Crispell

Merging television and the Internet sounds like a good idea. But there's at least one stumbling block--the people who use the Internet most heavily are not the biggest TV watchers. Those with at least a year of online experience watch about 11.5 hours of TV a week, compared with 14.5 hours for the general public, according to Crestwood Associates of Kirkland, Washington. As cyberspace interest expands, however, the newest web users appear to be more mainstream. They watch 12.5 hours of TV a week.

Interest in a TV that also acts as a computer is reasonably high; 45 percent of a random sample of adults say they might buy one, finds Aragon Consulting Group of St. Louis. On the other hand, 45 percent say it's not likely. (The remaining 10 percent are neutral, undecided, or refused to answer the question.)

As for WebTV itself, an existing service that delivers the Internet via television, 51 percent of respondents to an online survey say they would buy it, according to Cyber Dialogue, an online research and database marketing company. But most aren't willing to pay the several hundred dollars a year that WebTV currently costs. Thirty-nine percent would pay less than $100, and another 24 percent would pay between $100 and $200.

The biggest obstacles to WebTV among cyberheads, aside from price, are the inability to select or change Internet providers, and lack of sufficient providers, cited by about two-thirds of respondents. Six in ten also voice the concern that using TVs for surfing the Net will cause conflicts with other family members who want to surf channels.

The Aragon and Cyber Dialogue surveys were conducted among 400 randomly selected adults and 644 online users, respectively, and have margin errors of plus/minus 5 percent. Crestwood Associate's Inside Internet Review maintains a 2,000-person panel to track online attitudes and behaviors; call Edgar Kully at (206) 827-6111, or see Internet site www.crestwoods.com. Contact Cyber Dialogue's public relations firm, G.S. Schwartz & Co., at (212) 725-4500. Call Aragon Consulting Group at (314) 726-0746.