doxa.comunicación | nº 28, pp. 241-260 | 245
January-June of 2019
María José García-Orta, Victoria García-Prieto and Miriam Suárez-Romero
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
their research: young people believe that television is not made for them, but for adults, criticizing the language they use (unsuitable for young people and children), without observing children’s timetables, without truthful information and even without ethics and professionalism. “The picture shown can be summarized as follows: they have lost interest” (Vidales, Aldea and De la Viña, 2012: 111).
For his part, Guerrero Pérez (2018) has recently analyzed the evolution of linear television consumption by millennials by comparing it with the rest of the non-segmented audience:
The youngest sectors of the population –millennials and younger generations to come– demonstrate audiovisual behaviour that prioritises services that are always connected and can be personalised, as opposed to rigid, closed product offerings. They are attracted to those products that give them an active role, not only as consumers, but also as programmers and producers, placing them at the heart of the stories that interest them (Guerrero Pérez, 2018: 1,243).
The author marks the turning point in 2013, when “linear television consumption began to decline progressively and consistently up to the present day, especially among younger audiences. In just five years, television viewing was reduced by an average of 21 minutes per person per day” (Guerrero Pérez, 2018: 1,234). According to this author, the downturn coincides with the rise of ‘catch up’ services of traditional television, which through their online platforms allowed users to view content already broadcast by the channel in a linear way, as well as products produced exclusively for the platform.
Guerrero Pérez (2018) also highlights two key years: 2014, with the boom of pay-tv in Spain due to its inclusion in the combined packages (mobile, landline, internet) offered by providers (p. 1235); and 2015, when Netflix entered the Spanish video on demand market. This platform has been able to change the rules of the television and film market, since it is not only dedicated to the distribution of works produced, but has also been engaged in series production. This is “a player that quickly understood that its business could take advantage of technological and media convergence (Heredia, 2017: 284).
In 2016, Netflix would be joined by HBO Spain and Amazon Prime Video, and a year later by Sky. All of these were international platforms that broadened the audiovisual product offering already provided by SVOD platforms such as Filmin and Rakuten TV (formerly Wuaki TV). The video sector was enhanced by AVOD (Advertisement Video on Demand) services, which offered users free and unlimited access to their catalogue in exchange for the insertion of advertising, as in the case of YouTube. “As a result, in just a few years, the Spanish market went from a state of undersupply to a situation of audiovisual oversupply” (Guerrero Pérez, 2018: 1,235).
This is a product offer in which the viewer is no longer tied to the timetables of the channels, but rather “can choose to watch the content when she or he wishes, either by recording them or watching them by streaming” (Quintas and González, 2016: 380), thus organizing personalized consumption.
This trend has progressively increased over time. “Television surrenders to the Internet at the hands of the youngest” was the headline chosen by Libre Mercado (Vega, 2018). They explain it as follows:
The causes are mainly to be found in a change in consumer behaviour. As published by the World Economic Forum, generational renewal is the key to understanding media replacement in the USA.