5 ms·

Is media consumption zero sum?

29 points by dangoldin 11y ago

phkahler 11y ago
If you forget about how many "service" a person is subscribed too, you realize that they are ultimately limited by TIME. In that sense, every human activity is part of a zero sum game except in circumstances where two can be done at once - like running while listening to iTunes. The market for human-hours is finite. I've wondered if GDP could be increased by reducing work hours, it would free up more time for consumption!
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > I've wondered if GDP could be increased by reducing work hours, it would free up more time for consumption! Ugh. To heck with GDP, start measuring the happiness of your citizens and doing whatever you can to give everybody a great quality of life.
  - Retra 11y ago
    There's probably a good correlation between the two. Either way, you run the risk of burning through resources that have long-term value.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Very important that we finish up with the self-driving electric cars & 100% renewables first. Then we can move on to automating everything else.
exelius 11y ago
I've always believed that media consumption is zero sum; or at least has been for a few decades. The reason is simple: we only have so much time in the day. Media consumption takes up a huge part of that. And while an individual's level of media consumption may rise or fall, it's relatively consistent across a large number of people. I have a hunch the author is stumbling onto the problem of media measurement. Basically, as more forms of media are available, we tend to consume more of them at the same time. For example, in the 80s I may have watched TV while reading the newspaper. As we have added more types of media in the form of mobile, video and games, we just add more potential "double counting" (or even triple counting!) scenarios. Also, many of these usage measures tend to be self-reported; and the more dimensions you have in a self-reporting questionnaire the less accurate the results are likely to be when you add them up (rounding error, poor recall of actual times leading to "proportional" times, etc). Media measurement is hard. We still haven't figured it out for online advertising, which should arguably be easier than other types of media since we have better mechanisms for measuring things automatically. Things are moving towards the long tail though, so I do expect to see a continued growth in the variety of media available. But if you want to see a "zero sum" media in action, just consider that the average ratings for "Seinfeld" were 21 million viewers per episode. 20 years later, the most popular show on TV was "Sunday Night Football" with an average of only 13 million viewers. TV ratings have actually been on a steady decline since the 1950s [1]. So if you give people more options, they will watch them -- at the expense of other forms of media. That's a zero-sum market in my book. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#Most_watched_series_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_televisio...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > For example, in the 80s I may have watched TV while reading the newspaper. As we have added more types of media in the form of mobile, video and games, we just add more potential "double counting" (or even triple counting!) scenarios. Exactly. I sometimes find myself watching a TV series while simultaneously reading and commenting on HN, while simultaneously playing a slow-paced videogame, while simultaneously browsing Facebook and holding several conversations on it. I often try to bundle media that don't overlap cognitively together, like series episode + HN, in order to save time.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    It's zero sum at best. The TV may be on, but if I'm on HN, either HN or the TV has my attention - I'm not really "doing both". But it may be even less than zero sum, because I may decide to turn it all off and go take a walk (and not look at my phone while I'm walking).
- dangoldin 11y ago
  That's definitely fair - I was approaching it from the measurement perspective but I'm not sure there's a real distinction. Think of the use scenario of the self driving car - that's a bunch of time that's immediately opened up that was used doing something else and can now be filled with consumption. Of course we have a max of 24 hours * our concurrency level each day but we're nowhere close to saturating that.
  - exelius 11y ago
    I'm not sure the impact of the self driving car will be as profound as you think. First, people already consume media in the car -- unless you drive in silence, you're sitting around listening to the radio, podcasts, streaming music, something. Second, while we may be able to increase our consumption concurrency for that period of time, I'm not entirely sure it's new consumption -- it's just displacing radio. It could also drive consumption down if people choose to work in the car and not consume any media at all -- they can't do that today because they're busy driving. The big problem with using media measurement to gauge media consumption is that we can really only measures access, not consumption. The advertising world is built around impressions for that reason; there's an implicit assumption that some percentage of "impressions" will go unnoticed. Measuring that and trying to get your ads in a format where they will be consumed more often when they are shown is pretty much the focus of the entire advertising industry. For a very concrete version of this, think of how DVR users skipping commercials has led to an increase in product placement within shows.
vitd 11y ago
Personally, I think my media consumption has been increasing. I stopped listening to commercial radio over a decade ago because the ads were too annoying and frequent. I stopped watching live TV for the same reason and started using the DVR to record everything. But now we have ad-free internet radio, and subscription services like Netflix, and HBO, and the content has improved considerably. I'm almost filling up my DVR for the first time in 10 years because there's enough good stuff to watch and so few annoying distractions while watching it! I think the lesson is clear - make high quality content people want and don't constantly interrupt it with annoyances and you'll increase viewership.
- dangoldin 11y ago
  I agree that high quality content makes it more enjoyable but do you think part of that has also been more time to enjoy the new content?
rokhayakebe 11y ago
On a DNA level. I am not a scientist but if DNA is a storage of information, then it seems living things are nothing but data input and output. Absorbing information is truly so deep in the way we are, you can say it on a dna level. We may just be responding to what makes us us.
Chefkoochooloo 11y ago
Indeed, people turning to our phones and laptops for media consumption, like Hulu or Netflix. We used to use our time to watch television, but we are now using YouTube instead. We have easy access to technologies so we don't switch platforms. It is a big shift.

29 points by dangoldin 11y ago

If you forget about how many "service" a person is subscribed too, you realize that they are ultimately limited by TIME. In that sense, every human activity is part of a zero sum game except in circumstances where two can be done at once - like running while listening to iTunes. The market for human-hours is finite. I've wondered if GDP could be increased by reducing work hours, it would free up more time for consumption!

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> I've wondered if GDP could be increased by reducing work hours, it would free up more time for consumption! Ugh. To heck with GDP, start measuring the happiness of your citizens and doing whatever you can to give everybody a great quality of life.
- Retra 11y ago
  There's probably a good correlation between the two. Either way, you run the risk of burning through resources that have long-term value.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Very important that we finish up with the self-driving electric cars & 100% renewables first. Then we can move on to automating everything else.

exelius 11y ago

I've always believed that media consumption is zero sum; or at least has been for a few decades. The reason is simple: we only have so much time in the day. Media consumption takes up a huge part of that. And while an individual's level of media consumption may rise or fall, it's relatively consistent across a large number of people. I have a hunch the author is stumbling onto the problem of media measurement. Basically, as more forms of media are available, we tend to consume more of them at the same time. For example, in the 80s I may have watched TV while reading the newspaper. As we have added more types of media in the form of mobile, video and games, we just add more potential "double counting" (or even triple counting!) scenarios. Also, many of these usage measures tend to be self-reported; and the more dimensions you have in a self-reporting questionnaire the less accurate the results are likely to be when you add them up (rounding error, poor recall of actual times leading to "proportional" times, etc). Media measurement is hard. We still haven't figured it out for online advertising, which should arguably be easier than other types of media since we have better mechanisms for measuring things automatically. Things are moving towards the long tail though, so I do expect to see a continued growth in the variety of media available. But if you want to see a "zero sum" media in action, just consider that the average ratings for "Seinfeld" were 21 million viewers per episode. 20 years later, the most popular show on TV was "Sunday Night Football" with an average of only 13 million viewers. TV ratings have actually been on a steady decline since the 1950s [1]. So if you give people more options, they will watch them -- at the expense of other forms of media. That's a zero-sum market in my book. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#Most_watched_series_per_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_televisio...

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> For example, in the 80s I may have watched TV while reading the newspaper. As we have added more types of media in the form of mobile, video and games, we just add more potential "double counting" (or even triple counting!) scenarios. Exactly. I sometimes find myself watching a TV series while simultaneously reading and commenting on HN, while simultaneously playing a slow-paced videogame, while simultaneously browsing Facebook and holding several conversations on it. I often try to bundle media that don't overlap cognitively together, like series episode + HN, in order to save time.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  It's zero sum at best. The TV may be on, but if I'm on HN, either HN or the TV has my attention - I'm not really "doing both". But it may be even less than zero sum, because I may decide to turn it all off and go take a walk (and not look at my phone while I'm walking).
dangoldin 11y ago
That's definitely fair - I was approaching it from the measurement perspective but I'm not sure there's a real distinction. Think of the use scenario of the self driving car - that's a bunch of time that's immediately opened up that was used doing something else and can now be filled with consumption. Of course we have a max of 24 hours * our concurrency level each day but we're nowhere close to saturating that.
- exelius 11y ago
  I'm not sure the impact of the self driving car will be as profound as you think. First, people already consume media in the car -- unless you drive in silence, you're sitting around listening to the radio, podcasts, streaming music, something. Second, while we may be able to increase our consumption concurrency for that period of time, I'm not entirely sure it's new consumption -- it's just displacing radio. It could also drive consumption down if people choose to work in the car and not consume any media at all -- they can't do that today because they're busy driving. The big problem with using media measurement to gauge media consumption is that we can really only measures access, not consumption. The advertising world is built around impressions for that reason; there's an implicit assumption that some percentage of "impressions" will go unnoticed. Measuring that and trying to get your ads in a format where they will be consumed more often when they are shown is pretty much the focus of the entire advertising industry. For a very concrete version of this, think of how DVR users skipping commercials has led to an increase in product placement within shows.

vitd 11y ago

Personally, I think my media consumption has been increasing. I stopped listening to commercial radio over a decade ago because the ads were too annoying and frequent. I stopped watching live TV for the same reason and started using the DVR to record everything. But now we have ad-free internet radio, and subscription services like Netflix, and HBO, and the content has improved considerably. I'm almost filling up my DVR for the first time in 10 years because there's enough good stuff to watch and so few annoying distractions while watching it! I think the lesson is clear - make high quality content people want and don't constantly interrupt it with annoyances and you'll increase viewership.

dangoldin 11y ago
I agree that high quality content makes it more enjoyable but do you think part of that has also been more time to enjoy the new content?

rokhayakebe 11y ago

On a DNA level. I am not a scientist but if DNA is a storage of information, then it seems living things are nothing but data input and output. Absorbing information is truly so deep in the way we are, you can say it on a dna level. We may just be responding to what makes us us.

Chefkoochooloo 11y ago

Indeed, people turning to our phones and laptops for media consumption, like Hulu or Netflix. We used to use our time to watch television, but we are now using YouTube instead. We have easy access to technologies so we don't switch platforms. It is a big shift.