Parks Associates is an international market research and consulting company, with a specialty in emerging consumer technology products and services. They were founded in 1986. On April 17, 2013 Parks Associates released a new whitepaper entitled “Moving from Second Screen to First Screen.”
The whitepaper was developed for iMediaShare, a company that provides hassle free, big screen entertainment. Its goal is to take visual and audio entertainment to a new level. The whitepaper examines the current and future role of mobile devices in TV viewing and entertainment experiences.
The results show that smartphones and tablets are expanding their role in video second screen experiences. Slightly less than a quarter, 22 percent of U.S. broadband consumers are checking or updating their social network on a mobile device while watching TV.
The report also shows that instances of mobile activities while watching TV increases significantly among Millennials. Consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 are 70 percent more likely than other age groups to look up TV listings on their mobile devices.
Millennials are also known as Generation Y. Yes you guessed it correctly, Y comes after X, so it is the demographic cohort following Generation X. No one can find a precise dates when Generation Y starts or ends.
Parks Associates director, Brett Sappington said that "The mobile device is the implied peripheral in the second screen concept, but increasingly it is the first screen consumers look at during a video viewing experience. The growth of OTT (over-the-top) services, pay TV initiatives such as TV Everywhere, and increases in mobile apps have all contributed to this shift. Eighteen percent of U.S. homes with a smartphone or tablet use an app from their pay TV provider to check TV listings, program their DVR, or watch TV programming."
OTT services from providers such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, as well as apps from content owners are the driving force behind the rapid increase in mobile usage. What is interesting is that a large majority of this mobile viewing is done at home, not while the user is on the road.
It would seem that 60 percent occurs on a smartphone while even more, 70 percent happens on a tablet. This is an indication that consumers will engage in a blended usage scenario with the TV being the preferred screen for viewing, while their mobile devices are used for content discovery and selection.
Kostadin Jordanov, CEO for iMediaShare, said "It's crucial to integrate the processes as much as possible. Users are already using devices for a variety of purposes in parallel with regular broadcasting but still pick up the remote for TV access. The touch-screen interface of mobile devices provides a much more intuitive user experience for content discovery than traditional forms. Mobile devices thus need to become native to discovery and control of the TV viewing experience."
If you want to read the entire contents of the Moving from Second Screen to First Screen whitepaper, you can do so by clicking here.
My DVR provides a listing of all the channels and shows that I can watch or record on a weekly basis. It does this while still keeping the picture on the screen. I find it very easy to use my remote control to view the list and decide what I want to what and click on record if I so desire.
I supposed that the question is, “what’s the fun in that?” Isn’t it more fun to use your mobile device to check out the TV listings and to use the apps from content owners to watch previews on your smartphone while you are watching TV?
Edited by
Ashley Caputo 
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