Social TV - Which screen is First?

A new Ericsson study of 12,000 consumers from 12 countries around the world finds that 62% of them use social media while watching TV at least once a week - a huge jump from 2011's report that 18% used social media while watching TV weekly. And 40% of those people are talking about TV programs on social media.  In addition, there's been a jump in the use of video-on-demand - 60% of consumers watch archived programming at least weekly.  The study also found that two-thirds of consumers use mobile devices (tablets, smartphones or laptops) for “their everyday TV viewing, both for video consumption and to enable a social media experience while watching TV.”
  Still, the dominant means of watching TV content remains the TV set, while mobile devices permit consumers to interact with others while doing so, and to watch TV when they're away from their sets.

Together, this research underscores how deeply habits are changing, and how essential it is for programmers and marketers to capture the TV viewer not only on the “first screen” but also on the screen they use for interaction -- the mobile one in most cases.

The changing TV consumption landscape is raising new questions about how, where, and when people use "TV." One of the more interesting is a comment from Ogilvy’s Chief Digital Officer, Brandon Berger -

“We have this idea that the TV is the first screen, but where is the activity occurring? It’s occurring on the tablet or the mobile device, so which one is the priority screen?”

So are the changing patterns of use related to social TV merely an incremental evolution of traditional TV uses & gratifications, or are we witnessing the start of a transformational revolution in how people relate to - and use - media and information services?  Something to think about.

Sources - More Than 60 Percent of Consumers Use Social Media While Watching TV, VidBlog
Ericsson Report - TV and Video: An analysis of evolving consumer habits