Whose Faulty Vision

Outdated Survey Thinking

I was having trouble sleeping last night, moping about having to start dating again, and feeling grumpy as usual, and thank goodness, I didn’t write another long, whiny blog post about it. So instead, here’s some more musing about DVRs.

I started an online survey today, and one of the first questions was, “on an average day, how many hours do you spend watching primetime TV?” And I couldn’t answer it. I dropped out of the survey because I genuinely didn’t know how to answer it, and I didn’t want to give them a misleading answer.

Here’s the rub: By “primetime TV”, do they mean TV shows that I watch during the primetime hours, or TV shows that are broadcast during the primetime hours, regardless of when I watch them? I never watch anything as it’s being broadcast. And I don’t usually even know what time the shows I watch were originally broadcast. So what am I supposed to answer?

You see, too many media people are still stuck in an outdated mentality when it comes to TV. I would no more watch a TV show as it’s being broadcast than I would read a magazine as it’s being printed. And there are an increasing number of other TV viewers like me, whether they do their viewing via TiVo (like I do), via DVD, or online.

Media and advertising people need to get with the program. And yes, I’m in advertising, so a part of this is my responsibility, but I’m not in the media buying side of things, so I wouldn’t be involved in designing a survey like that one. When I do get to influence media decisions, I make sure that everyone remembers the media age we’re living in.