Does this mean “cord cutting” is on the rise? Nielsen avoids such a declaration in its report, but I think the best explanation comes from Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger, who coined the term “cord nevers” last year. “The real challenge to the pay TV business model are behaviorally-driven cord-nevers,” he said in November report. “These are tomorrow’s householders that are in their teens (and younger) today. They are growing up in an Internet-based video culture, in which the mantra of ‘why pay for TV?’ and ‘pay TV is a rip-off,’ develop.”

What’s also interesting to note is the industry still distinguishes between “streaming video” and “watching TV.” If you ask many people in this 5% group, they’d say that watching a Hulu show on their TV set is watching TV, not necessarily streaming a video. It’s just like on-demand TV — especially with devices like Roku that makes it so easy — and an emerging demographic of younger viewers make no distinction. This is one terrific reason why pay TV providers are making their services more social and portable, hoping to engage this elusive, tech-savvy demographic.

The BBC explains: “When they have some breaking news, an exclusive or any kind of urgent update on a story, they must get written copy into our newsroom system as quickly as possible, so that it can be seen and shared by everyone – both the news desks which deploy our staff and resources (like TV trucks) as well as television, radio and online production teams.”

The BBC says it will still break news on Twitter, but it will ensure that rest of the organization knows about it first. (By written copy, the BBC is referring to a short alert summarizing the new information.) As Sky News says, the goal is “to ensure that our journalism is joined up across platforms” and reduce the times when different information appears on Twitter than other Sky News platforms “or the news desks learning from Twitter details that should have been first passed on to them.”

(Sky News also issued controversial limitations on what its journalists can tweet and retweet, which is a different matter. For the purposes of this story, we’ll stick to breaking news.)

Wearing my TV news hat, both BBC and Sky News’ breaking news policies make a lot of sense. I worked as a an assignment editor for years (both local and network), and we hated surprises. Everyone expects the desk to know what’s going on, communicate immediately across platforms and ensure adequate resources are dispatched ahead of the competition. If everyone’s on the same page, the organization reacts quicker.

That said, I can’t tell you how many times I was surprised before Twitter came along: and the surprises happened on TV. The cable channel would scoop the broadcast channel, or vice versa. Local reporters on a developing story routinely broke new information on-air without telling the desk or the producer. Most of the time, it wasn’t negligence: in the speed of new information — especially if you’re on the air at the time — it’s often difficult to alert everyone before you broadcast it.

That’s certainly not ideal — and news organizations have set up internal alerting systems to help — but it still happens routinely. And it’s not the end of the world, because TV is the “core” platform, and there’s a bit of an expectation that the newsroom is watching its own air.

So if Twitter is just another distribution platform from the perspective of the consumer, why the hard-and-fast rules to delay breaking a story for a few moments until you ensure the newsroom is notified? If you’re a reporter in the field about to go live, would you delay your live shot to call it in first? If breaking something on Twitter under your own brand (reporters are brands, too) carries the same value as breaking it on TV, then what’s the difference? Is it just as easy to monitor your reporters’ tweets as it is to monitor your own air?

This is certainly not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison, and I’m not suggesting that BBC and Sky News are wrong. But I am suggesting that there may be exceptions to the rule. For starters, defining “breaking news” is a difficult task to begin with: a policy could make reporters think twice before tweeting, constraining their social reporting and slowing the organization overall. Often, it’s those unfiltered new developments tweeted straight from a field correspondent that are so powerful.

Yes, everyone should work hard to avoid surprises, which TV newsrooms still despise as much as I did years ago. But I think it’s OK if they happen occasionally on Twitter, just as they happen on TV.

What do you think?

(Full disclosure: I work for @breakingnews and BreakingNews.com. We also have a UK account, @breakingnewsUK, that often RTs the great work of BBC and Sky News.)

Instead of just announcing it on air, @wsbtv built anticipation with a tweet promising big news that will “change Atlanta TV.” Soon thereafter, they sent a personal video message from Pearson, one personalized for Twitter (she calls them her “tweet-hearts”) and another for Facebook. “I wanted you to be one of the first to know,” she said, plugging the 4, 5, 6, and 11 p.m. newscasts for more.

Then @wsbtv suggested a hashtag, #Monica, and WSB staff shared pictures and goodwill wishes on Twitter and Facebook. It all added up to a ton of trending topics in Atlanta: 6 of the top 10 trending topics were about her departure. She received hundreds of @ messages to her personal Twitter account, @MonicaWSB, (she answered many of them), and the station’s series of Facebook posts attracted over 1000 likes+comments.

WSBTV.com also created a special section commemorating Pearson’s 37 years.

It’s a great example of a coordinated social media campaign at a local TV station that respects consumers on all distribution channels — not just TV. (Although WSB was sure to promote the newscasts several times.) It also goes to show that integrating social media into the planning process for marketing and news events — not tacking it on after the fact — can make a big difference.

• 6 of the 10 said they experienced “social disruption” in engaging with a second-screen app during the game, including negative reception from others in the room.
• 4 of the 10 said the second-screen ad experience distracted from the primary TV spot
• 7 of the 10 said they had trouble getting the apps to work properly, including “poor content recognition, loud group conversations and a general confusion as to what ads actually held synced capabilities.”
• But… 8 in 10 said they derived value from the second-screen content experiences. “There was also a widespread acceptance and deeper engagement found for ads that rewarded their viewers with specific incentives.”

All this, according to CTV Advertising, adds up to one conclusion. “”There is a lot of power within the second screen, but also a lot of considerations and difficult factors when creating brand experiences for consumers,” said Zachary Weiner CEO of CTV Advertising. “Our belief holds that true two way interactivity found within the first screen holds the potential to have more seamless user experiences, such as our main practice area of connected TV advertising.”

Now, ten “couch consultants” are not a statistically-significant sample by any stretch, and CTV Advertising certainly has a vested interest in attempting to prove the point that second-screen apps are distracting. But I think there’s some truth buried in here.

As we mentioned in our Super Bowl social wrap-up, the big game is a different animal and not a good gauge for daily TV programming. Many people are watching with their friends — more than any other TV event — and the social TV experience is happening in real-life. “Second screen experiences are very unsocial when watching with friends in real life. Not sure of solution,” tweeted NBC News’ Ryan Osborn during the game. If I’m watching alone, that’s another matter.

Second-screen ad experiences are still in their early days, and they have a ways to go. “So few of them were done with any forethought whatsoever,” wrote Alan Wolk, managing director of the social strategy department at KIT Digital. Wolk argues that most second-screen ad experiences are “way too time-consuming and confusing” to conduct while trying to watch TV. “Let me save something for later in a basket, bookcase, coupon book – whatever you want to call it. But don’t make me stop and make decisions I have to think about.”

Wolk also raises one of my longtime concerns about Shazam. Unless you’re lightening fast — and know exactly where you’ve stashed your Shazam app — tagging a 30-second commercial is a challenge. (For the record, Shazam says it saw “record engagement” during the Super Bowl.)

In the world of companion TV experiences, the second screen has a big head-start over connected TV. That’s because 1) a touch screen interface beats a remote control hands-down and 2) the iOS and Android platforms have tremendously more scale than all of the fragmented connected TV experiences combined. But what happens as Android (underway now) and iOS (probably soon) apps begin to extend into connected TVs themselves? Will the first screen or second screen become the primary “companion” experience? What if it’s both, synchronized together? This will be a very excited time over the next two years.

What do you think about the first screen vs. second screen debate?

Most-talked-about moment: There wasn’t a jaw-dropper this year, but the game came down to the final moments, generating an average of 10,000 tweets per second (peaking at 12,233) in the final three minutes of the game, Twitter says. That surpasses Madonna’s halftime show, which drove 8,000 tweets per second (peaking at 10,245) over a five-minute period. Those are both English-language records for Twitter, falling behind the all-time record of 25,088 tweets per second in Japan.

The highest Tweets per second #SuperBowl peak came at the end of the game: 12,233. 2nd highest was during Madonna’s performance: 10,245.

— Twitter (@twitter) February 6, 2012

The 53-year-old Madonna (yes, her age was actually part of a trending topic) dazzled on stage. Most of the tweets were positive, but not by much: Networked Insights found 28% positive, 21% negative. Some viewers starting buzzing after MIA briefly flipped off the camera — a moment lost to many, but pointed out by Deadspin in this clip. If you’re a football fan, the biggest moment had to be when Bradshaw sort of tried to fall down before scoring a touchdown.

By the way, the game set a Nielsen TV ratings record of 111.3 million people.

Best missed opportunity: “If Madonna would have Tebow’ed at the end of Like A Prayer, Twitter would have crashed,” tweeted @had2sayit, among others. Twitter, by the way, didn’t crash for us at all during the game.

Best social media moment for a commercial: USAToday’s Ad Meter — which is connected with Facebook this year — scores the Bud Light “Weego” ad as #1 (video below), with two Doritos spots following in the #2 and #3 slots. But data from Bluefin Labs gives the crown to the H&M ad, with 109K social media comments (and as you might imagine, 83% of them were women.) Here are the top 5:

• 1. H&M – “David Beckham Bodywear” (109K social comments)
• 2. Chrysler – “It’s Halftime in America” feat. Clint Eastwood (96K)
• 3. NBC’s The Voice – “Vocal Kombat” feat. Betty White (9i0K)
• 4. Doritos – “Man’s Best Friend” (74K)
• 5. Pepsi – “King’s Court” feat. Elton John and Melanie Amaro (45K)

TiVo has released its real-time data around the commercials, showing the most replayed moments: Doritos’ user-created “Man’s Best Friend” took the top spot, followed by the M&M’s Ms. Brown spot:

The biggest brands and celebrities in social media: Networked Insights crunched the numbers around brands “share of voice” during the big game. Here are the top 5:

• 1. Doritos – 14%
• 2. Budweiser – 13%
• 3. Coke – 11%
• 4. Pepsi – 8%
• 5. Acura – 6%

And the top three celebrities (from commercials) in social conversation:

• 1. David Beckham (H&M) – 39% (4X more conversation than H&M itself)
• 2. Clint Eastwood (Chrysler) – 21% (3X more than Chrysler)
• 3. The Darkness (Samsung) – 11% (slightly less conversation than Samsung)

As for Eastwood’s ad (my personal favorite), “(It) was perceived by many to be a Clint Eastwood PSA for Detroit, and resulted in three times more conversation around him than Chrysler,” explains Networked Insights.

Best social TV play by an advertiser: And the winner is… Chevrolet. The car company’s second-screen app (below), Chevy Game Time, was a smart marketing move. As viewers answered trivia questions (and browsed factoids, tweets and ad replays), Chevy gave away cars and thousands of other prizes. Chevy also sponsored the #superbowl hashtag on Twitter, as well as NBCSports.com’s live stream of the game. It’s Armageddon spot also created one of the most-talked-about moments with a direct jab at Ford, and it gave Eli Manning a Corvette (l@DrewMTips asked, “Why not a Volt?”) Come to think of it, Chevy may have spent the most money in the big game, but it certainly made the best social TV play in our book.

Second best social TV play by an advertiser: Coca-Cola’s Polar Bear Bowl featured a live stream of two animated polar bears watching the game, reacting to the action in real-time. It’s a creative idea, especially as CokePolarBowl.com pointed to Facebook during the game, then to YouTube after. Here are the bears dancing to Madonna’s halftime show:

The best second-screen experience: To start things off, we checked into the game on GetGlue, Miso, IntoNow, Shazam, ConnecTV, Umami, Foursquare and Viggle. Ok, that’s overkill, but we wanted to give them a spin on the biggest social TV event of the year. For starters, GetGlue sailed passed its all-time check-in, counting over 100,000 before halftime and 150,000 total for the game, 3X its all-time record (the company doubled its servers for the Super Bowl.) We’re let you know of other second-screen stats when we get them.

We paged through Miso’s SideShow, sponsored by Hyundai, which provided factoids, polls and other tidbits in sync with the game and the Hyundai ads themselves (that is, if you’re on DirecTV or AT&T, otherwise you advance manually.) IntoNow served up a solid second-screen experience with conversations and real-time stats, although only a little over 4,000 people “tagged” the Super Bowl in the app — and the discussion was a little sparse.

Nearly half of the Super Bowl spots were set up with Shazam, powering over one million giveaways, including a few cars. Today, the company says it saw “record engagement,” and the Best Buy ad — which featured two of Shazam’s founders — topped the list. If you tagged the game, you could browse real-time stats and participate in polls, and tagging the halftime show (below) opened up a free LMFAO remix. Shazam has the largest installed base of any second-screen app, and it will be interesting to see the numbers — anecdotally, we found it hard to tag 30-second spots in time.

This was ConnecTV’s first big moment, releasing to the public a week ago. Like IntoNow, it’s graphically well-done, with live stats and discussions. But again, discussions were sparse. (It also had a bit of a scoring snafu in the first quarter, which it fixed after users pointed it out.) Umami was clean, but relied on others for most of the app: pulling in Twitter conversations and framing ESPN.com’s NFL Gamecast for real-time stats.

The loyalty app Viggle (above) tried a different approach, giving users 200 points to check into the game and offering them as much as 10,000 more points to participate in a second-screen experience throughout the game. By the way, 7,500 points adds up to a $5 gift certificate.

Meanwhile, over on NBCSports.com (below), it offered the first live stream of the Super Bowl with several camera angles, basic stats and discussion. It worked well for us — although we saw some tweets that it buffered a bit. Its social features were limited, and probably the best feature was the live stream worked flawless on the iPad.

Who’s the best in the second screen? That’s a tough call because different apps have different purposes. (For example, for real-time sports stats, ESPN is hard to beat. For pure conversation, a Twitter client.) Data from Trendrr found that GetGlue, Shazam, Viggle and IntoNow (in that order) authored the most Super Bowl tweets, which is one perspective. Also, the Super Bowl is a unique animal. “Second screen experiences are very unsocial when watching with friends in real life,” tweeted @rozzy. “Not sure of solution.” I think that’s a fair statement, and we’re still very early in the second-screen space.

Here’s a infographic wrap-up of the Super Bowl, provided by Bluefin Labs. And scroll below to leave a comment with your favorite social media moment of the big game…

Nearly 60 percent of mobile phone users will be checking their devices during the Super Bowl, according to a new survey by Velti and Harris Interactive. And about half (47%) of all viewers say they expect to check up to 10 times during the game. “There’s no going back now from the fact that the Super Bowl is truly a two-screen experience,” said Krishna Subramanian, Chief Marketing Officer of Velti.

As we outlined earlier this week in our Super Bowl social TV preview, startups, advertisers and media brands are rolling out second screen experiences and campaigns in force for the big game. Here are some other interesting stats from the survey:

• 83 percent of viewers who plan to use their mobile device expect to use it as much or more than they did during last year’s Super Bowl.
• 13 percent of viewers with phones say they’ll check during game play compared to 26% during commercial breaks.
• Men are twice as likely as women (26% vs. 13%) to use their devices during the halftime show.
• Among 18-34 year olds, those who say they’ll check their phone during the game predict they’ll use the device an average of 19 times.

The study did not address what people would be doing on their phones, such as texting and tweeting. But an earlier study by Yahoo and Razorfish found 94% of mobile multitaskers communicate while watching TV (texting, talking, email, social networks and IM), while 60% are looking up content.

As a quick recap, the partners make up a who’s-who list of broadcasters: Gannett, Hearst, Belo, Scripps, Cox, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek, Raycom and Barrington — 201 stations in all. Several groups invested in ConnecTV, to boot. Like many second-screen apps, ConnecTV provides synchronized content and conversations around what you’re watching on TV.

But ConnecTV’s approach is among the most aggressive efforts to achieve scale in the second-screen space. Unlike many specialized apps, it works across a huge swath of programming: 250 national channels, syndicated shows, live sports and local newscasts. “We operate the way you watch TV,” said ConnecTV Co-Founder Ian Aaron in an interview with Lost Remote. “No matter what channel you tune to, you’re going to have an experience. People don’t watch TV and say, ‘I’m going to download the NFL app,’ and then change the channel and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to download the X-Factor app….’ They don’t watch TV like that.”

When you first download the app or visit the site, you can authenticate through Facebook for a seamless login. Using audio fingerprinting, ConnecTV identifies what you’re watching when you check-in. It then serves companion content and conversations synchronized to the broadcast, both live and time-shifted. The shareable content ranges from factoids and polls, and the conversation combines curated tweets (from TV brands, show accounts and personalities) along with ConnecTV’s own internal community. You can see which Facebook friends have “liked” a particular show (on Facebook), and then invite them to join ConnecTV. You can chat with people around a particular show or with all your friends at once.

This is where ConnecTV begans to differentiate itself from most second-screen apps. If you’re watching a sports game, it provides real-time stats and plays. (For now, it covers your core professional and college sports, but they’ll expand to other sports and markets later this year.) If you’re watching a local newscast, it ties into partner stations’ iNews and ENPS computer systems, offering content and conversations synced exactly with the broadcast. In one example, ConnecTV plans to allow users (in some markets) to share their favorite stories from the app to Facebook and Twitter, which will then link the station’s video player with the exact clip cued up. Stations’ social accounts will also appear in the ConnecTV experience.

Through all of this, ConnecTV gathers data in the background (you can set various privacy controls). For example, when people tune in, where they chat the most, and other shows they also watch. “There’s various information that we share to help our broadcast partners program and help them promote content,” Aaron explains, adding that it’s anonymous data. For example, it may know that viewers of Modern Family have a strong cross-over with the syndicated show Anderson, helping WFAA inform its promotional schedule. And of course, ConnecTV tracks the demographics of audiences who are participating around specific shows.

With all this data, ConnecTV also believes it can drive tune-in. In the conversation window, you can not only see what your friends are watching, but ConnecTV provides “interstitial” promos (below) that alert users when a show they’ve watched before is about to air. Broadcaster partners can also extend their TV ad deals into ConnecTV, tying ads to specific broadcasts to amplify on-air spending.

Now to the big question: can ConnecTV achieve enough scale to make it work? Aaron says the local TV partnerships are a key ingredient of the strategy. “[Stations] have a commercial obligation to promote us on TV twice a day and deliver a persistent link from their local web presence” spanning 201 stations and 76 million homes, he said. And that promotion is pointed directly to ConnecTV, not a station-branded app. “This is a departure for broadcasters,” Hearst TV’s Roger Keating told us in November. “We became convinced that it just doesn’t scale for someone to download show-specific or even channel-specific apps.”

While the owned-and-operated stations from the major networks are not part of the partnership, Aaron said ConnecTV has been talking with all of them. “At first, everybody will say, well, we have our own apps,” he said. “But we’re not looking to displace that…. we have something that’s more of a blanket across the whole TV ecosystem.” Aaron said ConnecTV could even promote show-specific second-screen apps.

Aaron says he also believes the second-screen is inherently local. “So much news is local news, so much sports is around your local team,” he told us, adding that most viewers’ friends are local, too. “Watching TV has become more of a localized experience, and we’ve tried to recreate it with this interface and give programmers the opportunity to reach to those local groups. And brands and advertisers, as well.”

ConnecTV is a free iPad app, with smart phone apps coming soon.

Just as FDR triumphed on radio and JFK on TV, Barack Obama shines in social media circles with an upbeat, easy-going style. In the hangout, questions ranged from the formal to the slightly bizarre (one woman asked him to dance.) The most memorable moment: a woman pressed him on unemployment in the technology sector, explaining her husband is an engineer out of work. “Send me your husband’s resume,” he said, reminding her at the end of the event to follow through on it.

While some journalists may cringe at the questions, Obama was in his element, navigating the conversations with ease (no, he did not dance.) And that may explain why he does so many social events. Just as TV changed campaigns and candidates, social media is doing it all over again.

For the last question, a woman asked Obama if she could introduce him to her kids over the hangout. It was the kind of unscripted social media moment that warms the hearts of campaign managers everywhere. And you won’t get that in a presidential press conference.

Comcast has been testing a social TV experience (called “Xcalibur”) in Augusta, Georgia, which includes a recommendation engine and “friend trends,” powered by Facebook (screen grab above). Tunerfish, the social TV app Comcast acquired in 2008, has been playing a central role in development — and the Tunerfish founders’ names are included in the patent application.

Comcast told FierceCable that it regularly files patent applications, and the features may or may not become full-fledged products sometime in the future.

Beyond the fact that Comcast apparently intends to integrate many second-screen features into the first-screen experience, it’s interesting to note that it wants to patent what will become basic staples of TV viewing experiences in years to come. After all, the social TV land grab includes technology patents, as well.

Viggle is based on rewards — not badges or stickers — but gift cards from Amazon, Starbucks, Burger King, iTunes and freebies like an iPod Shuffle and one month of Hulu Plus. To earn these rewards, TV viewers accrue points by checking into broadcasts, setting reminders for upcoming shows, watching videos, playing games and taking quizzes (such as, “Test your American Idol IQ”).

For example, I checked into the TODAY Show (the audio recognition was touch-and-go for me) and I earned 10 points. It then encouraged me to set a reminder for NBC’s The Firm for an additional 10 points. The app will then send a push alert (this can be turned off) shortly before the show begins.

The app highlights featured shows across several networks — American Idol offers the most points for a check-in at 400 — and there’s a long list of available rewards. A $5 Amazon gift card costs 4,000 points, and a $5 Starbucks gift card is 7,500 points. A Fandango movie ticket goes for 17,500 points. The iPod Shuffle costs 100,000 points, and a Kindle will put you back 175,000. You can even donate $5 to the Boys and Girls Club and Convenant House (7,500 points each.)

The app also offers social features like browsing the latest tweets about a TV show (“latest chatter”) and sharing check-ins on Facebook and Twitter — but it has yet to create its own community like competitors GetGlue, Miso and IntoNow. Viggle also links to a show’s Facebook page, IMBD page, Wikipedia page and it runs searches for related merchandise on iTunes and Amazon.

As we wrote before, Viggle is a serious entry into the social TV space with a substantial resource investment behind it. The rewards are a nice differentiator that could grow into a TV loyalty platform with plenty of tie-in opportunities for advertisers. And the “reminders” feature has the potential to get network and cable TV marketing execs excited. However, the “check-in” market is competitive, and it will take a big investment (and aggressive partnerships) to help Viggle gain scale. Stay tuned…