Count me in the majority, I look at my smartphone when I am watching TV. "About 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching television, according to Nielsen’s mobile connected device report for the first quarter of 2011". And I suspect this percentage will only continue to grow. What are we doing with our devices while concurrently watching TV. For me, it is to catch up on email, get scores of out-of-market baseball games, and play Words With Friends and other silly games. Commercial breaks become an obvious time to sneak a peak but I also escape to my second screen in program. The reasons seems to be that most content on TV is what I call "low involvement" programming. It requires little attention to know what is occurring and one can drop in and out of viewing the show and still feel engaged in the plot. On the other hand, "high involvement" programming requires more attentiveness to remain engaged in the on-screen plot. Losing focus causes the viewer to feel lost in what may have transpired on the screen. For these types of programs, less 2 screen viewing would seem to occur.
Would viewers want to engage with the TV program on their smartphone or tablet? I see a fit with those who want that water cooler social approach during the show. Others may simply want related content pertaining to on-screen action on their handheld device. For now, the second screen provides unrelated content to the TV screen, but still of interest to the user. For the moment, we are building a comfort level with a 2 screen viewing approach and I doubt that will ever diminish.
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