MUMBAI: The elusive 18-34 year old male has finally turned up.
Bigresearch conducted its latest installment of its half yearly Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (Simm), and the findings confirm Nielsen's determination that 18 to 34 year old American men aren't watching as much TV as a year ago.
That age group prefers going online, playing video games and listening to radio, says an official release. The company's research VP Joe Pilotta added, "In today's culture, television is an intermittent companion, People have it on while they're doing other things. To treat it as if it were new to all, or as the only activity a consumer is taking part in, does not take into account the impact of the intermittent activity."
Simm quantifies how the public consumes media and the impact those patterns have on buying habits in a fragmented and changing marketplace. Of the 18-34 year old men surveyed, 57.5 per cent play video games while 72 per cent surf the Internet. 67 per cent watch movies and 71 per cent listen to the radio. Simultaneous use of online and radio media among 25 to 34 year old males has increased while simultaneous TV and online usage has decreased. Simultaneous usage of TV and magazines is also on the decline in this group.
Since August 2002, viewership of the idiot box among males 18-24 has gone down 8.8 per cent while that among those aged 25-34 is down 12.2 per cent. Those men who live at home with their parents are significantly less involved with media than those who are on their own. Similarly, activities in and out of the home are having an impact on how those consumers spend their time.
On the whole, however, media usage among males between the ages of 18 and 34 years is on the decline. Newspaper, magazine and TV watching is down, most notably on the younger side of that category. Male TV watchers from 18 to 24 are down 13 per cent and those who read newspapers in that age group is down 10.5 per cent.