An Audience Perspective on the second screen Phenomenon

Second screen applications are among the latest of the TV industry’s innovations to retain the TV viewer’s attention in a challenging multi-screen environment. These applications can be regarded as an extension of TV content consumed on a TV set towards lightweight portable devices such as tablets. While numerous commercial instances are available internationally and the existing literature on the topic from a technical perspective is extensive, the audience side of this phenomenon has been paid far less attention to. Moreover, in the case of Flanders, the successful commercial implementation of second screen applications remains limited. In this research, we aim to elicit what TV viewers’ expectations and preferences are regarding second screen functionalities. By applying means-end theory and a laddering approach we were able to discern how these preferences subsequently relate to the TV show itself, the consequences for the viewing experience, as well as how second screen applications and usages are expected to fit in the viewer’s everyday life. Lizzy Bleumers iMinds-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel [email protected] Wendy Van den Broeck iMinds-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel [email protected] TV Audiences, Second Screen, means-end theory, laddering, qualitative research De Meulenaere, Bleumers, and Van den Broeck, Audience Perspective on Second Screen The Journal of Media Innovations 2.2 (2015) 7 their strategy focuses on following the viewers’ gaze, rather than trying to redirect them to the TV screen. Our aim is to grasp what TV viewers’ expectations are regarding second screen applications’ functionalities. More in particular we will focus on how these link up to TV viewers’ expectations on the consequences that these properties have for their viewing experience and what they personally value in their everyday life. The research question we maintained was “How can a second screen application be relevant for TV viewers as a companion application?” Second screen applications today exist in different forms, aimed at enhancing the viewing experience, stimulating the viewer to search for additional and related content, and reviving the idea of social TV by integrating existing (e.g. Twitter hashtags) as well as new social media streams in the application. Cesar, Bulterman & Jansen (2008) created a framework for second screen application development in which they discern four types of second screen usages. From a user perspective, these usages are controlling, enriching, sharing, and transferring television content. Murray et al. (2012) developed a concept for an application that serves as a companion guiding the viewer through IntroductIon In contemporary Western society, we live in a multiscreen environment. We interact with screens all day long, considering it an almost mundane practice. Moreover, concurrent media consumption on multiple screens appears to be rising. Data shows that contemporary TV viewing increasingly involves simultaneous multi-screen usage (Internet Advertising Bureau, 2012). TV viewers seem to effortlessly divide their attention between Internetconnected portable devices (e.g. smartphone or tablet) on the one hand and the television set on the other. In a context in which commercial TV networks are challenged in their advertisement revenues (e.g. ad skipping, multitasking, etc.), these shifting user practices may pose an additional threat (Jennes & Van den Broeck, 2014). Especially because most of the content accessed using these additional devices is not related to the content displayed on the TV screen (Internet Advertising Bureau, 2012; iMinds-iLab.o, 2014). At the same time, we do see that the industry tries to turn this threat into an opportunity by targeting these lightweight devices via interactive applications: the so-called second screen applications or TV companion apps. As such the intricacies of contemporary serialized drama by providing information on the characters, the relationships between the characters, but also salient events. Plenty of commercial examples are available today. Given the apparent success (of some) of these applications as well as the existence of the viewer practices that we described above, second screen applications might become a successful innovation. At the same time, the failure of various second screen start-ups (Poggi, 2014) indicates there is still a substantial need for research on the characteristics of and conditions for a successful second screen application. Research on second screen currently unfolds along two main lines of inquiry, including social TV and media experience. The social TV cluster investigates what motivates audiences to engage in online commenting via social media and how these audiences are internally diversified (Doughty, Lawson, Linehan, Rowland & Bennett, 2014), and on how online conversation patterns can vary across various types of TV shows (Mukherjee, Wong & Jansen, 2014) or within TV shows (Giglietto & Selva, 2014). The media experience cluster studies to what extent the TV viewing experience is impacted by the additional second screen (Kusumoto, Kinnunen, Kätsyri, Lindroos & Oittinen, 2014; Murphy De Meulenaere, Bleumers, and Van den Broeck, Audience Perspective on Second Screen The Journal of Media Innovations 2.2 (2015) 8 & Hughes, 2014; Van Cauwenberge, Schaap & van Roy, 2014). Our study is however more concerned with the design aspect of second screen applications. As such, this study falls within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, which is more in line with the studies of Geerts, Leenheer, De Grooff, Negenman & Heijstraten (2014), Cesar et al. (2008) or Murray et al. (2012). In the remainder of this paper we first situate and define second screen. Subsequently, we elaborate on the applied Means-End Theory (Subramony, 2002; Zaman, 2007; Bleumers, Van den Broeck, Lievens & Pierson, 2012), hereby indicating how we investigated the potential relevance of second screen for contemporary TV viewers. Next, our method and sample are elaborated upon, and our results discussed. second screen And the multI-screen tV VIeWer Given the novelty of second screen, both academic literature and business reports offer various definitions, descriptions and approaches regarding second screen, differing in what aspects and practices are included or excluded in the phenomenon. For Walley (2012), for instance, second screen consists of all types of TV related practices possible using a mobile device, including content interaction, but also remote consumption (e.g. watch TV content on a tablet on the bus). For the sake of our own research, this definition is far too inclusive. We chose to adopt the following more narrow approach of the 2nd screen society (2012) as a starting point, which defines second screen as A companion experience in which a consumer engages in relevant content on a second device, such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop while watching (TV ) content on the “first screen” (typically a television but not limited to the living room) (Lexicon section, para.