We've been saying for a while now that we've been observing behaviours in users of digital media where they are not consuming digital media alone, but retaining a continuous partial attention (or here) of multiple media at the same time.
In the very young, this can extend to 4 or 5 things at a time - mobile phone, instant messenger, web and TV or X-Box for example.
In us oldies, we believe it to be web and TV mainly, or web and radio, web, instant messenger and TV at a stretch.
Well, now I have firm populist proof. At 11.25pm tonight, on the Friday Night with Jonathan Ross show on BBC1, Jonathan was interviewing Bruce Forsyth - an entertainment legend in the UK!
Jonathan suggested that people go and sign up to the Facebook group "Give Bruce Forsyth a knighthood" - I found the group within about a minute and a half and there were 2,117 members. As I now check it 10 minutes later, the number is: 2,658. The rate of increase was VERY rapid in the first two or three minutes and tailed off after about 5. Within a minute, nearly 200 had joined up.
To me... absolute proof that we are consuming more media overall, not less TV... (actually we knew that already, but this is just a slightly more fun illustration!).
The TV companies can rest easy - social networks aren't taking away their viewers. They're just partially occupying them whilst they watch TV!
The lesson? TV companies: when you tie your content to these social networks and find ways to interact between the two media, people respond... quickly. They obviously like it. So do it more!