Coronavirus (COVID-19) changes in daily life and media use
The first half of this year was a time when many things changed as the coronavirus infection (COVID-19) spread like a pandemic around the world. The corona phenomenon encourages social distancing between people in offline spaces and brings so-called untact daily life. As Corona’s daily life enters a prolonged phase, it has a chain effect on the economy and society as a whole, greatly shrinking the economy.
In this trend, the media industry is in a situation where joys and rains are mixed. In content production, activities are restricted, making it difficult to select materials, and attracting and collecting investment funds is not smooth. In addition, ad sales are showing a decreasing trend, making it difficult to raise financial resources. However, due to the coronavirus routine, people refrain from outside activities and the time they stay at home increased, and the rate of domestic and foreign media usage increased. In particular, the demand for streaming services that can be enjoyed indoors such as audio books, videos, and music has increased. According to Nasmedia data, 7 out of 10 people refrain from outside activities, and instead, the rate of viewing video content indoors has increased significantly. In addition, the extreme disconnection between people offline is reshaping our daily lives, such as education, shopping, working from home, and meetings, through online where non-face-to-face and non-contact situations are possible and connecting on-tact daily life. There is also an opportunity to rediscover related businesses and new businesses derived from this. What will the media use change in the coronavirus situation?
- Increased TV viewing time
However, as the nature of disaster broadcasting about the corona phenomenon has been strengthened, news viewership has increased, focusing on comprehensive programming channels and reporting channels. This seems to be a peculiar phenomenon that occurred in the daily life of Corona, which appears to be a temporary phenomenon due to situational variables such as interest in the latest news, an increase in the unemployment rate, an increase in the time spent at home, and an increase in leisure time.
- Ad revenue change
Domestic broadcast advertising sales also sharply declined due to the economic downturn. According to KOBACO’s Advertising Industry Outlook (KAI), advertisers expected that the advertising market in April 2020 will decline significantly compared to the same month last year. This shows similar patterns in online and mobile advertisements, indicating that overall advertisement execution has decreased. Although overall TV viewing has increased due to the social distancing campaign in Corona’s daily life, it seems that it is difficult to lead to overall broadcast advertisement sales due to the concentration of comprehensive programming channels and reporting channels. Currently, the corona phenomenon is causing a series of blows between industries, and the advertising market has shrunk greatly, so it seems difficult for existing broadcasters to avoid financial threats, including terrestrial broadcasters that used advertising revenue as their main source.
- Use of OTT service
The increase in OTT use in Korea is due to the accompanying various marketing strategies in consideration of the corona disaster situation in the service. To this end, OTT operators have expanded content and reinforced services for user lock-in and influx of new users. Wave and Season added new movie content and provided EBS live special lectures to supplement school education following school opening and school delays. Watcha Play, in cooperation with the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, issued a “3-day free pass” to self-quarantine subjects. Netflix pre-released the latest releases on behalf of movie theaters and provided popular original content in 4K HDR high definition.
- Changed Media Usage Behavior and Post COVID-19
Recently, with the rapid development of Internet technology, the universalization of smartphones, and the change of lifestyle, TV viewing has declined and OTT services have been increasing in media usage. However, from the beginning of this year, the coronavirus infection has shown a widespread trend, and media usage has changed. In February, as the coronavirus infection began in earnest in Korea, TV viewing and OTT service use grew together. However, in the same situation, watching TV and using OTT service revealed different purposes. Watching TV showed the purpose of acquiring the latest news information in a new disaster situation called coronavirus infection. On the other hand, the OTT service shows a kind of entertainment consumption purpose for leisure and entertainment that can be enjoyed indoors by putting a brake on people’s external activities. If the corona situation ends in the future and returns to daily life, TV viewing will decline again. However, there is a possibility that OTT service will show continuous usage behavior based on user experience.
Recently, the subscription-type OTT service is releasing a new streaming platform with premium original contents on the front. In particular, large media companies such as Disney, NBC, HBO Max (WarnerMedia), and Apple TV are investing enormous capital in creating and investing in original content, providing vast content libraries and applying new technologies for optimized user experience. Relatively, small and medium OTT services and existing broadcasters are bound to be a big burden in competition with large OTT providers.
Even before the Corona daily life began, the OTT service was able to find a change in the use of media. In the media market, numerous video contents have been a driving force for the growth of the OTT market as IP-based online media are concentrated. Since the second half of last year, mergers and acquisitions of large media groups and the launch of new OTT services have predicted intense competition for OTT services. In this situation, Corona Daily served as a catalyst that further accelerated the growth and competition of OTT services.
Now, the media market needs to prepare a post corona for the changed usage behavior. A practical win-win plan and a compromise between the existing broadcasting service providers and the media service providers should be established. Since each business operator has different interests, it seems necessary to continue coordination and discussion with experts and related parties from various fields of public, government, academia, industry, and research. In particular, a specific plan should also be presented so that public broadcasting can faithfully fulfill its public functions and responsibilities by providing stable financial resources in addition to advertisements so that they can thrive in the changed environment. In recent years, the use of OTT has increased, and the problem of network usage fees of OTT operators has risen to sleep again. In order to resolve oligopoly, reverse discrimination, and imbalance caused by OTT concentration, it is necessary to maintain market order by improving related systems and to discuss in-depth for balanced development.