Do tough times draw TV viewers to web?

In the first global recession of the internet age, budget-conscious consumers are showing they no longer have an endless appetite for every new gadget or media service.

Many users are looking to eliminate overlapping services that offer more of the same old formula entertainment in a different package or on another device.

With iPods, digital TVs, video recorders, multimedia PCs and broadband connections in many households, consumers considering their options now find a range of cost-effective online substitutes for broadcast, cable or satellite TV.

TV programming, not just short-form entertainment, is served up on video sites in markets around the globe at Google Inc's YouTube, Daily Motion, Joost or at Hulu in the US.

Could this year then be the year we seriously ask "What's on the internet?" rather than "What's on television?"

A study released last week by the consulting group Deloitte on media consumption habits suggests that this digital switchover may be occurring before our eyes.

The survey, completed in October, of US consumers aged 14 to 75 years found that a majority of consumers already see their PCs as more of an entertainment device than they do TVs.

The data is part of a five-country study of nearly 9,000 consumers that found parallel shifts toward online entertainment formats from TV, albeit with a more pronounced focus on mobile phone usage outside the US. In Brazil, consumers spend an average of 19.3 hours online for personal use versus 9.8 hours watching TV.

In the US, three-quarters of so-called "millennials" - young consumers aged 14 to 19 years raised entirely in the internet age - say PCs offer more entertainment than TVs.

About half of baby boomers agree that PCs offer more. Even a surprising 42 per cent of the "Reading generation," people aged 62 and above, see PCs as more entertaining than TVs.

US "millennials" typically spend 18.8 hours a week online, nearly twice as much time as they spend on TV, the report finds.

They watch DVDs on computers for an average of almost two hours. They are nearly five times as likely to listen to music on a PC, phone or music player than to the radio, the data shows.

This all may come as news to "mature" adults - those over 62 - which the US survey found watch 21.5 hours of TV per week, double the time they spend online.

But the shift has already happened, however long it may take older generations to catch up, says Ed Moran, Deloitte's director of product innovation in New York, who led the study.

Forced to consider budgeting their once free-spending media habits, consumers may find getting better connected online to be the best way to cut their entertainment and communication costs.

Market researchers have seen a pick up over the course of the past year in switching behaviours as consumers cut back on premium movie or music packages or video rental subscription services.