Deloitte Study Reveals Shifting Consumer Media Landscape

The global consulting firm Deloitte & Touche has released its second annual survey on the what it calls “the state of Media Democracy” — that is, how online and other digital communications tools are changing the way we “consume” information.

Deloitte only released an overview of the findings to the public, preferring to keep the whole study for use as a marketing tool with clients (good for them, I say — you can’t give EVERYTHING away for free).

Here are some of the highlights of their study:

• 69% of Americans consider their computer more entertaining than their TV


• 58% want to connect their home TV to the Internet so they can download content or view anything at all they have on their PC


• 36% use their cell phone as an entertainment device, but advertisers and content companies have largely failed to exploit this


• 50% of female Americans (62% of males, and 56% of all Americans) state that videogames, PC games and Internet games have become an important entertainment source to them


• Over 60% of all consumers visit an online gaming site to play games [note from Jon Greer: I find this hard to believe]


• 32% of consumers actually consider themselves to be a “broadcaster” of their own media


• 45% are creating personal content for others to see


• 54% are increasingly making their OWN entertainment


• 69% of consumers are watching/listening to content created by others

On this last point, David Carr had a great back-to-work-after-vacation column in the New York Times this week about the allure of creating his own media — in this case, a slideshow of his family vacation for his friends and family to watch — versus spending his time consuming mass media. I can’t really do the column justice by summarizing it — consider it recommended reading if you are interested in pondering the subject of personal vs. mass media, circa 2008.