• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, August 1, 2013

The land of Shakespeare employs descriptions of media behavior worthy of consideration for the American lexicon. Terms such as multi-tasking and dual-screening in stateside media industry reports and discussions are getting a bit tired. Regardless, neologisms are constantly needed, if for no other reason than to give the appearance of progress.

So, here are a couple of depictions one can use to appear cutting-edge and innovative at the next client meeting or internal planning gathering: media meshing and media stacking.

Media meshing is the Twitter dream: using a smartphone, tablet or other device to communicate about a program while it’s being watched. Media stacking refers to using other devices while viewing, but the activity isn’t related to the programming.

The terms have been floating around the U.K. for a while, but gained some prominence this week in a new report from Ofcom, the British version of the FCC. 

The research offered a surprising result regarding media meshing. More British adults (16%) regularly talk on the phone about the TV they’re watching than engage in real-time social networking (11%). Is this the 1950s? Maybe so and more on that later. Texting led in meshing behavior with 17%.

(Speaking of social networking, with media buyers and planners hungering to mine Twitter behavior and capitalize on it, Kantar Media said Thursday it is launching a product to aid them there in 2014. That would follow Nielsen debuting a Twitter TV ratings product in the U.S. Kantar plays a Nielsen-like role in the U.K., maintaining the panel that generates TV ratings.)

Perhaps understandably, media stacking overwhelms media meshing in general behavior levels. Just about half of U.K. adults (49%) use a device while watching TV for something unrelated to the programming, compared to 25% who engage with the TV on two devices at once.

The most notable data from the Ofcom report, however, might be an indication that with the help of meshing and stacking, families are increasingly gathering together in front of the big living room screen in the 26 million British TV homes. The Guardian ran the headline: “The living room makes a comeback, and it has technology to thank.”

The supporting evidence: fewer U.K. homes have more than one TV set -- 41% in 2012 and 35% in 2002.

If true, that’s a shocker. As people buy all these spiffy, massive HD and OLED sets, it would seem logical that the old sets wouldn’t go to the driveway for collection, but another room.

Nonetheless, in the first half of this year, far fewer 5-to-15 year-olds had a set in their room (52%) than the 69% in 2007.

Those figures alone wouldn’t indicate more family assemblies in the living or big-TV room. But there's lots of media stacking, while data shows a significant number of tablet users watch content in the living room. Ofcom also says children using tablets for TV-type viewing tend to do so in the living room or bedroom.

So, one can overlay the figures to make the case that more families are spending the evening together in front of the TV thanks to alternate, personalized devices. Still, as Ofcom chief researcher James Thickett said in a statement: “Unlike the 1950s family, however, they are also doing their own thing. They are tweeting about a TV show, surfing the net or watching different content altogether on a tablet.”

So, family conversation and interaction may not be increasing, but some might say sitting close to each other is major progress these days.