At the Media Money Makers session, “Who’s Really Watching What and How?” president of research at NBC Universal, Alan Wurtzel discussed five consumer-centric trends that people ignore at their peril.

1. Dynamic Pace of Change – Growth of media technologies outpaces our ability to adapt. He called the Vancouver Olympics a $2 billion experiment, for which lessons learned were wiped out two months later when the iPad was released.

2. Consumers Still Love TV – Assuming TV is “over” is a huge mistake. People spend 51% with TV, 25% with the Internet, 15% with radio(!), 4% reading newspapers, 2% with magazines, and 3% with mobile sources. People who watched the Vancouver Olympics online watched twice as much TV Olympics as people who didn’t watch on the Internet. For “30 Rock,” the NBC show with the greatest Internet following: 78% watch it via live TV, 12% play it back from their DVR, and only 10% watch it online. To put social media in perspective, Facebook has 151 million unique users per month, but the four broadcast networks gather 275 million unique viewers per month.

3. Fragmentation – It has become much more difficult to gather people. Nielsen now gathers information and reports ratings for 1035 channels. In 1995 the average US consumer had 41 channels available and viewed 10.4 channels. In 2008, the average US consumer had 130 channels available yet only viewed 18 of them.

4. AlphaBoomer Phenomenon – There are 3 transformative changes today, 1) the digital revolution, 2) rise of  the Hispanic market, and 3) Boomers. Boomers (45-64 years old) are 33% of the population and they have money, yet they are invisible to marketers. The perception is that AlphaBoomers are technophobes, but the reality is that they embrace technology. They spend 49% more for online content than Gen Y!  75% of Boomers use technology to keep in touch with friends and family. 46% visit social websites monthly.

5. Time for a Reality Check – Conventional wisdom, media, and bad research can all be misleading. For example, Nielsen studied cord-cutting: 93% of people retained their existing service over the last year, 5% swapped cords (switched cable or satellite providers), and 1% were true cord cutters. Understand what is really going on. We generate notions of the general populations based on our circle of acquaintances. 77% of US teens and young adults don’t have a Twitter account.  60% of teens stop using Twitter after a month.