MediaBuyerPlanner: The higher penetration of DVRs this season than last – about 20 percent this year compared to just 9 percent last year – seems to have driven some interesting viewing patterns for the first week of the new television season.
Strong DVR viewing of premiere week shows made it nearly impossible to determine actual viewership levels and thus the true performance of the new shows in the first week, writes MediaPost. Dave Poltrack, executive vp, chief research officer for CBS, said that the network’s polling showed that people were waiting until Thursday to watch shows they recorded on Monday, and that some were waiting until the weekend to watch all of their recorded shows.
He added that most of the recording was for the 10 p.m. shows, which could be why there has been more cumulative viewership at 9 p.m. than 10 p.m. Wednesday, for example, 41 million cumulative viewers watched the Big Three networks at 9 p.m., while only 33 million did at 10 p.m. On Thursday, 55 million watched at 9 p.m., and only 38 million at 10.
“We really need to wait a few weeks, when Nielsen starts reporting the delayed viewing, before we get a better handle on this,” says Steve Sternberg, executive vp of audience analysis at Magna Global USA. Sternberg ventures to guess that as much as a 5 percent or even more rating decline for live viewing could be due to increased DVR penetration in the Nielsen Media Research sample.
Related stories:
- Nielsen: TV Usage Drop Is Real, Not Due to Ratings Methods
- Study: DVRs Going Mainstream
- Nielsen Releases First DVR Penetration Numbers
