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Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » Social networking complements, rather than threatens, the television industry, according to a new report from Deloitte. Half of the respondents to a Deloitte/Gfk survey regularly watch television while surfing the web and, of this group, 54 per cent visit social networking sites. Online shopping (45 per cent) and social communication (emailing, instant messaging and Skype) (40 per cent) are the next most popular websites to visit at the same time as watching television.
Some television executives worry about competition for eyeballs, yet for others the concern is whether their programmes are generating sufficient social buzz. In reality, social networks complement the television viewing experience rather than compete with it. A significant amount of social network activity occurs concurrently with television consumption and television programmes provide important topics of conversation for social networks.
The British public spends 35 times more time watching television per month than surfing social media websites. Deloitte calculates that if television consumption were to stay flat as of May 2011, and time spent on Facebook continued growing at the same pace as maintained in the last two years, it would still take 10 years for the aggregate time in Facebook to reach just 10 per cent of that spent watching television.
Deloitte/GfK's survey found that 63 per cent of UK adults have never discovered a new television programme through a social networking site. Trailers are still the best way of raising awareness for new programmes. Almost half of 18-24 year olds (46 per cent) find out about new programmes through television trailers. This is in contrast to 19 per cent of the same age group who often find out about new television programmes through social networks.
Watching later would mean they would not be able to participate in the online conversation about the programmes with friends. The greatest intensity of commenting on programmes is during transmission, not before or after, when activity can plummet rapidly. Social buzz can encourage more people to watch TV live.
The volume of television related discussions on social networks is so high that Twitter publishes a specific index of the most popular TV related tweets. The top 20 programmes tend to be soap operas, talent programmes and news programmes. Occasionally, a major sporting occasion will break into the top 20. A strong showing among social networks' conversation helps with viewing figures, but is not integral to the ongoing success of a top 20 programme.
It should also be noted that the percentage of those tweeting about a particular television programme is tiny relative to the volume of viewers. A programme that has millions of viewers would, at most, generate tens of thousands of tweets. In contrast over half of people (54%) say they frequently comment to other people in the same room about the television programme they are watching.
David Wilkinson is Deloitte's Technology Media and Telecommunications Partner in the North East
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