LocateTV Blog

Although LocateTV helps the old-fashioned TV watcher who just wants to navigate their telly channels of an evening,  it is also ideally placed to fit in with the transformed viweing habits of a whole new generation.

First we hear from Adweek of a new survey calculating that 16% of consumers now watch whole episodes of TV on the net, over double the figure from last year, and that nearly 73 percent of online households watch or listen to entertainment on the web every day. Then comes the launch of Bebo’s Open Media, a platform allowing users to include premium TV and music content on their profiles.

What’s interesting in both cases is that we’re not just dealing with people watching shows from net content providers such as Ustream, Yahoo! and JibJab, but people wanting to access large networks that provide the same mainstram programming they would have previously watched on their TVs. Bebo’s partners also include the BBC, BskyB, Channel 4, ESPN, Endemol and MTV - in fact, much the same content that people are using LocateTV to search for.

It seems that we’re not just using the net as a platform to find new, fringe and user-generated content, but simply to watch what we would normally watch anyway, but at our own convenience. It seems to vindicate our suspicion that people don’t want to wade through daily schedules, but want to find where they can find individual episodes of favourite shows or films, and chose which media they use to consume them, be it TV, DVD or the net.

Anyone with a Bebo profile might like to think about including LocateTV widgets on their page, to share with everyone where and when their favourite shows are airing. It’s just another way to lend a social networking element to TV and film watching. In fact, if I put Gary Oldman on my profile, I might just find some fellow weird-wrinkly-lovers out there on the network.

Lottie