Heavy On-Demand media consumers nearly doubled in the past year.

The percentage of Americans who are heavy On-Demand media users has increased from 11 percent in January 2005 to 21 percent in January 2006 according to a new study by Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research.

Internet and Multimedia 2006: On-Demand Media Explodes examines this dramatic increase in On-Demand media usage. In 2005, Arbitron and Edison explored a variety of behaviors, combined with digital device ownership, that define a heavy preference for consuming media On-Demand. This year’s study reveals a dramatic increase in the number of Americans age 12 and older who engage in multiple On-Demand behaviors such as watching Video On Demand (VOD) or listening to online radio, and/or own one or more On-Demand media devices such as a portable digital audio and video player (e.g. iPod®) or a digital video recorder (e.g. TiVo).

Key findings from the survey include:

· Eighteen percent of Americans own or use a digital video recorder (DVR), giving them the ability to record TV programming digitally to watch at their leisure, to pause live TV and to skip through commercials.

· Topping the list of nontraditional ways people have watched TV programming is buying or renting TV series on DVD (27 percent) and watching TV programs through Video On Demand (23 percent). In addition, 10 percent have watched TV programming streamed over the Internet, 5 percent have downloaded episodes (such as from the Apple iTunes® store), and 4 percent have watched TV clips on a cell phone.

· Portable MP3 player ownership (iPod and other branded players) has grown rapidly from 14 percent in 2005 to 22 percent in 2006; among 12- to 17-year-olds, ownership increased from 27 percent to 42 percent.

· Households with broadband Internet access now significantly outnumber those with dial-up access. Fifty-eight percent of those who have Internet access at home use either a cable or DSL modem for a high-speed Internet connection, compared to 38 percent who use a dial-up service.

· Nearly one in five Americans have watched video over the Internet in the last month. Nineteen percent of Americans have viewed Internet video in the last month; 12 percent have done so in the last week.

· Given a choice between never using the Internet or never watching TV, four in 10 would choose to keep the Internet and eliminate television.

· The study also includes highlights from the Arbitron/Edison study, “The Infinite Dial: Radio’s Digital Platforms,” released in April. The “The Infinite Dial” revealed that 21 percent of the U.S. population age 12 and older listened to Internet radio in the past month.

“These findings confirm that On-Demand media usage is not a fad or restricted exclusively to a tech-savvy consumer niche,” said Bill Rose, senior vice president of marketing, Arbitron Inc. “As On-Demand media becomes increasingly mainstream, it will compliment traditional forms of media distribution and offer new life and extended value for programming.”

“Traditionally, content has been defined by its medium as either TV or radio,” said Joe Lenski, executive vice president, Edison Media Research. “Today when consumers think of TV and radio programming, they increasingly expect it to be available from a variety of On-Demand digital platforms that transcend the tube in the living room and the standard radio dial.”

How This Study Was Conducted

The findings reported here are based on a January 13 – February 12, 2006 telephone survey of 1,925 people who were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of various forms of traditional, online and satellite media. Respondents age 12 and older were chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2005 survey diary keepers. In certain geographic areas (representing five percent of the national population), a sample of Arbitron diarykeepers was not available for the survey, and a supplemental sample was interviewed through random digit dialing.