• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, July 30, 2015

I always get the idea people are a little more serious here on the somber East Coast. Even if there was a Surf City in New Jersey that was number one and the Beach Boys lived here, I doubt they’d call themselves the Beach Boys or sing “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

It’s fun, yes, but like a New Yorker cartoon. It's thinky-fun.

So Tremor Video’s new graphic, analyzing what online viewing Americans did last month, and charting what kind of stuff was watched where online, fit some of my biases. It’s a fun chart to refer to and if you’re into making hasty, sweeping generalizations and need some scrap of evidence, you’ll want to save this link.  

In one wide swath of the South, for example, online viewing over-indexed on automotive videos, which I automatically assumed had to do with watching stock car racing videos.  And pretty much the whole western half of the United States in June over-indexed on shopping, hobbies, health, fitness and home and garden videos. That’s why Woody Allen couldn’t stand it there.

In fact, while the West Coast in June was wallowing in some mindless enjoyment of life and nature, here on the East Coast, the big online viewing topics were business videos in New England states and sports and politics in the northeast. Business and political videos occupied the minds and computers in the Great Lakes states.

Then again, in the Upper Midwest (as a Midwestern-born kid, I’d question Tremor’s labeling a bit), they over-index (+10) on pet-related videos and go way over index (+12) on fashion. (Maybe they look, but I’m not sure they buy.) Texans watch mainly shopping videos. We’ll just put a period at the end of that fact and salute Neiman Marcus.

Tremor says shopping “in general”  was one of the biggest video content draws with the Pacific (+25) South Atlantic (+75) and West South Central (+30) as the largest “consumers” of content.

Mid-Atlantic over indexed by +34 points on law and politics video content.

Food and drink was one of the biggest video content draws with the Pacific (+25) South Atlantic (+75) and West South Central (+30) as the largest “consumers” of content.

Tremor based this June video-watching on data from its partner sites, and I suppose it has value. If for example, you were contemplating a series of videos that would fully explore the politics of Nevada or the pets of Texas, maybe you should reconsider.

There are some places where stuff works and places where it doesn’t, and curiously, at least if you take these Tremor stats with a box-worth of Morton’s Salt, it’s apparent that even in a media-homogenized nation, there are still regional differences. If you don’t believe me, go to Washington D.C some Sunday morning and you’ll find brunch places overcrowded with people watching “Face the Nation.” That’s just over-indexing on weird.

pj@mediapost.com