La fin de la télévision? Recomposition et synchronisation: Des audiences de la télévision de rattrapage

The catch-up offer has multiplied the possibilities for viewers to watch TV programmes "where they want, when they want". For some analysts, this evolution is bringing on "the end of television", understood as having a scattered audience watching the same programme at the same time. We provide an empirical study of this phenomenon, based on daily audience data for all the catch-up programmes offered on the Web by French channels. We observe that, contrary to the "long tail" theory's claim, audiences are more concentrated on the Web than with TV streaming, and on-demand consumption remains for the most part bound by the time-frames set by the channels. Thus on-demand consumption does not eliminate television's ability to bring audiences together to share content.