Nielson factors in time shifting, viewer numbers significantly climb

[SnakeEyes]

If this is just the smaller DVR market, imagine what the bumps could have been with the much larger VCR user market over the years.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-10-11-nielsen-playback_x.htm

As expected, the biggest hits and series in brutally competitive time slots are among the most frequently "time-shifted": Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Survivor, House. Of the 18.8 million Lost fans for last week's season opener, 1 million — or more than 5% of the audience — watched the show later Wednesday night.

And NBC's The Office had the biggest percentage of delayed viewers: The show's ratings spiked nearly 7% when viewing later Thursday night is counted, and more than 11% from viewing up to a week later.


"Those people watch these shows at a much higher rate than the general population," CBS research chief David Poltrack says.

[stevel]

Nit: it's "Nielsen".

[Polcamilla]

Interesting. I thought Nielsen had been tracking DVR ratings for a while now.

The other interesting part of the article was that while DVR-use made for major ratings jumps, the networks could adjust ad revenues accordingly.

ADVERTISERS: Make your commercials TiVo-proof and we will watch them! (The easiest way is to include a brief shot of a baby or puppy. More challenging, but with better returns, make a really *interesting* ad.)

[ZeoTiVo]

ADVERTISERS: Make your commercials TiVo-proof and we will watch them! (The easiest way is to include a brief shot of a baby or puppy. More challenging, but with better returns, make a really *interesting* ad.)

I do go back to watch some ads but really interesting and marketing are not totally on the same track - ads are to get a message across to the consumer sometimes by repetition - think of the car lot ads that repeat the same name and number and deal (100$ over factory invoice) 30 times in 60 seconds - hard to make something like that interesting without hiring a really creative company that a car dealer could not afford.

we ffed commercails because they are there to impart a message to buy something not tot entertain. I think DVRs and commercials will never be compatible

[bawker]

Interesting. I thought Nielsen had been tracking DVR ratings for a while now.


They have for a few months, it requires them to tinker around with the innards (at least it did with my S2)...my tech explained that it was still fairly new technology for them.

Being a "Nielsen family" is pretty sweet. :cool:

[mattack]

Only a week?

They need to take into account those of us who tivo a whole batch and watch months and months later! (I'm joking..)

Though, just like the people who lie on the paper Nielsens (there was a segment on presumably the Lehrer show.. maybe it was still McNeil/Lehrer about a family who was a Nielsen family, and the kid admitted that he filled in shows even if he missed them, so they wouldn't get cancelled), maybe now TivoNielsens will prioritize their *watching* based upon which shows they want kept on the most. (Yes, I know that they aren't officially allowed to say that they're Nielsens btw.)

I am tending to actually do the opposite. Heck, I have like 2 *years* of 'er' recorded to DVD-R, and I've only seen a few of them over that time. But even on my Tivos, I've thought of cancelling SPs for things like the various CSIs which will absolutely make it to DVD. (disk space/tuner requirement issues..)