No Big Demand for Small Screen

Before Kaitlyn Brown headed to church camp this summer, her mother outfitted the 13-year-old with a sleek new Sprint phone that boasts one of the newest features on the market: mobile television.

"Me and my mom thought it would be a cool thing," said the soon-to-be seventh-grader, who lives in Spring Branch, Texas. But after watching a couple of jerky transmissions of comedy clips on the phone's display panel, Brown quickly became disenchanted.

"It kept stopping midstream and stuff," she said. "I didn't really like it, so I took it off. It was extra money, and I didn't think it was worth it."

She's not alone.

Entertainment purveyors may be scrambling to package their content into mobisodes, video downloads and podcasts, but a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that teens and young adults -- the generation most likely to be the early adopters of this new technology -- have yet to fully embrace it.

About half of young adults and 4 in 10 teenagers said they were uninterested in watching television shows or movies on computers, cellphones or hand-held devices such as video iPods, the poll found.

While more than 2 out of 5 teens and young adults indicated they were open to viewing this kind of content online, only 14% of teenagers said they wanted to watch television on a cellphone, and 17% said they would view programs on an iPod.

The findings suggest that networks are rushing to package content for these new platforms before even tech-savvy young consumers are hankering for the "third screen" experience.

The survey, which asked a wide range of questions about entertainment consumption, highlighted the pervasive influence of television particularly on tween girls, a majority of whom reported that TV shows affected their dress, speech, music preferences or social activities. In addition, it found that a surprisingly high number of teenagers and young adults gleaned news from traditional media sources such as local television and network newscasts -- for many through a sort of information osmosis as they absorbed news from programs their parents were watching.

Perhaps most intriguing, however, was the indication of a widespread indifference toward small-screen viewing among teenagers and young adults. While many in the industry expect the demand for such content to rise dramatically in the coming years, the poll offered clues to a consumer reluctance that first must be overcome.