Time.news – In the days of black and white, there was one television per neighborhood. With color, one for each family has arrived. There are now about 45 million in Italian homes. And they are a minority, given that between the kitchen, rooms and small rooms there are also 75 million connected screens. A little as if every Italian, from infants to over 100 years old, had a couple of screens at their disposal between TV, smartphone, tablet.
In this data, which emerged from the Auditel-Censis report of last November and updated on 11 April by the president of Auditel Andrea Imperiali during the annual report in the Senate, there is a whole world of changes. A world in which the screen is increasingly often in your pocket, but which at the same time aims to recapture the living room.
It’s easy to say tv
In Italian homes there are more smartphones (just under 49 million) than televisions, 7 million tablets and almost 20 million connected PCs. It is not surprising then that the use of contents, explained Imperiali, “from familiar has become individual, from indoor it has become mobile, from linear to on demand, thanks to about sixty different types of devices through which audiovisual content can be accessed. “.
Here because Auditel has introduced Total Audience, a new tool to measure audience data on all devices. Its effectiveness is linked to two other elements: the unique code of the video spots, a “plate” thanks to which Auditel tracks every single video spot used on all platforms and on all devices; the collection also of “unrecognized” listening, that is, generated by subjects who have not requested to be measured or are not prepared to do so.
“The new forms of use inevitably determine a change in the rules of the game”, underlined Agcom president Giacomo Lasorella. “There is an urgent need to identify new detection tools capable of photographing new audiences through shared and transparent rules”.
From the ornament TV to the smart TV
Homes are still crammed with televisions: 97% of families own at least one. “There are many – underlined the Auditel-Censis report – but in many cases they represent little more than an ornament”. By confusing what is being broadcast with what is being broadcast, television has been passed off too often and too quickly. Instead, we are witnessing “an unprecedented growth” of what the 2021 report defined as “television outside the television”: 7.3 million Italians watch television programs on the Internet that are broadcast simultaneously on linear TV and, among them, 4.2 million do so from their smartphones.
But, above all, “the demand for television content explodes on specific sites, paid or free”, with over 24 million Italians (48.4% last year) connecting and using on-demand applications. Streaming, but also features that, thanks to the Internet, allow you to watch individual programs when it is possible to do so. It is no longer the broadcasters that mark the day: it is the user who composes his own schedule.
If the spread of smartphones is nothing new (their number has exceeded that of televisions now more than three years ago), the eyes are now on smart TVs, connected televisions that allow both to watch traditional broadcasters and to surf online. , between streaming sites and apps. Thanks to the pandemic (which increased the time spent at home) and the transition to the new digital terrestrial (which makes older televisions unusable), between 2019 and 2021 the number of smart TVs increased by 46.6%, exceeding quota 15 million. A third of televisions are now connected.
The smart TV, Auditel and Censis affirm, is therefore a “tool for the construction of a personalized schedule” and the “gateway to the Internet”. But that’s not all: it is a much sought-after vehicle for streaming TV, which, according to Imperiali, has become “the global stage of the ongoing challenge between the American giants”. Netflix, Disney +, Apple, Amazon, Discovery-Warner-Hbo. And also Youtube. Yes, the very platform that first scratched the TV is now aiming to win it back.
CEO Susan Wojcicki said this last January in a letter in which she outlined the priorities for 2022: “The television screen is the one on which we have seen the greatest growth in 2021. We are exploring new ways to bring the best of Youtube to TV. “. Implied: connected. Wojcicki – who runs a company that lives off the Internet – doesn’t even need to say it, but Censis and Auditel also affirm the same thing: “Today television is smart TV”. And he wants to take back (also) the living room