Ofcom’s report – the interesting bits.

Ofcom’s Communications Market Report is out – and the headlines have been grabbed.

"Multi-tasking media consumption on the rise"

"Smartphone boom drives media multi-tasking"

The press and online reports make UK citizens sound like multi-tasking digital ninjas. There are lots of phrases like “... their Digital day” – but if you actually take the time to read it, you see that the report talks about things like analogue radio and, er, making phone calls.

In defence of the journalists involved, the report is 379 pages long. And I haven’t read it all either. I’ve read the bits that looked interesting to me. And here are some of them:

BBC spend more – for less.
Ofcom claims that BBC expenditure on radio increased by 26% over the five years to 2009, while commercial revenues fell by 22% over the same period. At the same time (the same five years) BBC share of listening went from 55.5% to 55.3%. Well done the BBC!

Facebook is HUGE
Ofcom: “Social networking now accounts for nearly a quarter (23%) of all time spent online. This has been driven by the growth of Facebook, whose reach rose by 31% to reach a unique monthly audience of nearly 25 million in the year to May 2010.”

I think we knew that Facebook was doing well - but it's nuggets like this one that really hit home.

Web, Dead?
Ofcom seem to disagree with the piece of link-bait in WIRED yesterday – a story that claimed the “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet” (I won’t link to it; it only encourages them).

Ofcom report:
Surfing the web is the most popular mobile internet activity. Our research shows that 18% of mobile phone users access the internet using their handsets, a five percentage point increase since Q2 2007.

Oh - so surfing web sites is actually getting more popular on new smartphones. Who knew?

This report covers a lot of “stuff”




The media consumption that’s been reported doesn't mean we're all slacking and wasting time. Ofcom’s report actually covers all sorts of communications – like using a telephone, doing emails, sending texts. And quite a lot of this supposed "media-consumption" is at work (click on the chart to see it more clearly).

That's because Ofcom isn't just talking about media. They regulate communications too.


Simultaneous use of media.
This has, perhaps, been the main headline today. Aren't we amazing? We consume some of the stuff that Ofcom regulates at the same time as consuming other things that Ofcom regulates. Simultaneously - like.

Yes – I sometimes tweet when watching TV. I listen to music swhen checking emails. I use the F1 interactive data while watching a Grand Prix on TV. But, in truth, some of the reported multi-tasking is not that incredible. To quote Ofcom:

“People are more likely to consume video, audio, and print media on their own, while text-based communications tend to be undertaken concurrently” and
“The majority of activity on mobile phones and computers occurs concurrently with other media consumption”

Okay...

But interestingly:
“Watching video on a TV set and listening to the radio on a radio set are most likely to be undertaken without other media” – I must admit that one surprised me. Radio is a prime candidate for accompanying another acticvity, one would think.

Then again, it’s to be hoped that in-car listening isn’t done at the same time as texting, etc..

Spotify - why so coy?
The report covers Spotify, Last FM etc., but doesn’t do a great job of reporting their listening share. They use Neilsen data, but this only reports the time when an application or website "has the focus" on the computer. Ofcom concedes that this isn’t an accurate estimate of listening… but they don’t seem to want to draw attention to the low hours-listened. Here’s a chart that’s in a different section – that appears to show that Spotify users only listen for 1.5 hours a month.



I’m not sure I’m reading it right. Remember that radio listeners tune in for about 80 hours a month. It appears that Spotify is much less compelling than, er, radio.

Those are some of my take-aways. Let me know what you spot...