• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 1, 2013

Good news: more media usage is on the way.

Consumers will have more time to access TV shows and other video content now that the Federal Aviation Agency will allow air travelers to use their tablets before planes take off and after they land.

What’s left for travelers? Will watching tiny videos in the lower third of a car’s front windshield be next?  (Perhaps that would be a bit better than texting while driving.)

One surprising research result over the past few years has been the continued rise of electronic media consumption – both traditional TV viewing and new digital media.

Research has also pointed to more viewing of media while consumers are at work. This probably doesn’t help U.S. productivity in a still-fragile economy. But, hey, getting more out of one’s workers has consequences.

Senior TV and media executives like to tout overall media growing trends, which fuels investment and buzz. But perhaps a bigger and more complicated factor for media growth comes from an obvious source: multitasking.

Distraction trends are also on the rise. Not everyone gets to see everything. Fractionalization of media is rampant. With all the media noise, some say it can be increasingly difficult to follow TV content. Think about what this means for advertising messages that run around that content.

No doubt about it: The number of technologies that allow consumers to skip and avoid marketing efforts will increase in the future.

All this leaves only one sizable time period available to access consumers’ clear and undivided attention: their dreams. Trouble is, I can’t seem to find the USB or WiFi connection.