Many of you may be familiar with the Live+7 Neilsen ratings, which are more accurate representation of how many viewers are actually tuning in. Those ratings include DVR viewership for the first week after a show airs, and in many cases, there can be huge jumps. For instance, Fringe — a Friday night show — sees viewership jump 60 percent from DVRs. Happy Endings, likewise, sees 40 percent jumps, while Modern Family has been known to add over 3 million additional viewers once DVR viewership is accounted for.
But the reason why there is not a Live+30 ratings — accounting for DVR viewership during the first month after a show airs — is because, according to Nielsen, only about 1 percent of viewers will watch an episode after its been sitting on their DVR more than a week. Could this possibly be true? Anecdotally, it seems to square with my viewing: If a show sits on my DVR for more than a week, it’ll probably sit for more than two weeks, which means I’ll probably never get around to seeing it.
What’s a more surprising number from this study is how relatively few people time-shift. According to Nielsen, 87 percent of viewers watch their television shows live (those numbers are even higher on cable, where 93 percent watch their shows live). Moreover, another 5 percent watch the show on the same day. This does not square with my viewing habits, or anyone else I know: Most people I know time-shift. If 87 percent of people are watching live, that means they’re also probably watching most of the commercials, which means that television advertising is not in nearly as much danger as I thought.
I wonder if social media and two-screen viewing has encouraged live-watching? I suppose it’s difficult to participate on Twitter/FB in TV discussions when everyone on your timeline is watching at different times.
(Source: Deadline)
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If you have a family you are most definitely DVR’ing shows. As for the one week idea, I’m not sold on it. Netflix has me trained on binge TV viewing, so I tend to let 2-3 episodes build up before I sit down and watch them on the weekend. Some shows like Arrow or Franklin and Bash didn’t sell me but I wanted to give them a shot so I DVR the first few episodes and then go from there. I DVR’d the entire 6th season of Dexter before I watched it. I can’t be the only crazy one out there that prefers binge TV to live TV.
I tend to do the same, especially with the hour long dramas. I know it’s sad to say, but I DVR’d all of “Game Of Thrones” and watched them in a marathon. “Sons Of Anarchy” too.
There’s some shows for which I have episodes sit there for a few weeks and then watch in a row, I’ve done that with Persons of Interest and Grimm notably (both good-bad shows, watchable but not addictive). But given how much I watch TV, it probably doesn’t account for a lot more than 1% of my TV watching.
So yeah, seems legit.
Also, can we make a corollary from this fact, and definitely admit that “spoilers” after a week are not fucking spoilers, watch the damn thing already!
I;ve done the same thing with Castle.
I watch a lot of stuff live just because I’m too excited to wait. I’ll just surf the internets or text or something during commercials.
Plus, I don’t want to be left out of conversations the next day.
You also still have your episode of Hoarders saved, I assume.
I’m pretty sure that show would give me a panic attack if I tried to watch it.
Agreed about being too excited to wait – but only for really good shows like Breaking Bad or Justified.
I saw this earlier and was really intrigued by the data showing that 87 percent of viewers watch their television shows live. I wonder how much of a factor the internet plays in this? I know, personally, that I tend to try to watch the shows I love live so as to avoid having them spoiled by the internet on Twitter and whatnot.
Also, should we totally trust Nielsen on this? After all, it is in their best interest to have advertisers believe that most people are still watching commercials.
Nielsen has kind of a love-hate with the broadcasters. The broadcasters can only afford to pay for ratings if the ratings show value (at least on a local level), so they had to work with Nielsen to come up with Live+ measurements to stay relevant.
It’s still a big problem in the advertising community. If you’re trying to sell anything time-sensitive (movies, cars, etc.) you don’t have a lot of value for anything besides live+same-day.
That’s also part of the reason crap shows with contestants (Idol, e.g.) are taking over the broadcast networks — if you can’t talk about what you saw last night while you’re working at Motor Vehicles, you’ll make sure to watch live next time.
If I watch something “live,” I still delay it a bit to skip by the commercials. And I say you can’t trust anything unless you verify yourself these days. Too many interests out there.
I’m guessing that sports, as well as daytime tv that runs in the background, skews these figures.
I have 11 episodes of Person of Interest on my DVR that I still have to watch, and yet I will watch Seinfeld reruns almost every time.
Same here.
Same thing with me and Treme.
I recorded the entire run of “Cheers” and sat to watch it in these marathon sessions. I was going through a rough period.
I let Girls episodes build up; then I try to wath them late at night and fall asleep while watching them (not trying to be sarcastic; thei really happens).
There needs to be stats for people like me, who watch semi-live. In most cases if I watch a show I will wait 15-20 minutes to start watching it and that will allow me to zap through the commercials and end the show about the same time it normally would. If its a two-hour show or two one-hour shows back to back, I will wait a half hour or so to start watching. For me its not about time shifting, but not watching commercials.
The exact strategy I employ for Mad Men viewing and I try for Breaking Bad, but usually fail at
Yep. And it works great for bball and football too. Especially football.
CAP SPACE!
It’s crazy how much more enjoyable football is on an hour time-delay with your 30sec skip button.
Working in a bar I never watch anything live, or sober for that matter.
I wonder to what extent sports, specifically football, is skewing those percentages. I know the NFL does batshit crazy numbers in terms of total viewers. I would guess most watch those live, or if anything, time-shifted by like 30 minutes to avoid commercials.
Excellent point.
Thought the same thing. Also thinking that stay at home moms and college students watching daytime talk shows and soaps skews the numbers, plus old people watching Fox News all day.
25% of the time Nielsen ratings are accurate everytime.
We usually try to watch everything live, but it’s nice to have the option of watching it later. I mean, you used to have to tape a show on a second TV in another room to watch a second show, so by force of habit, I watch live TV when possible.
And am old.
When I recently switched from DirectTV to cable (more for cable modem more than any other reason), I also got rid of the DVR. I found that I was one of those looking at the list of recorded shows thinking that I might like to watch them, but never getting around to them. I find that I don’t miss the DVR nearly as much as I would have guessed.
I have five “PBS Nature” shows sitting on my DVR right now…..and TEN “Once Upon A Time”s………
Who the hell has time to watch TV when there’s so much Internet Porn to catch up with….???
I am absolutely part of the problem, in fact I may win the Procrastinator’s Award as I still have the entire second season of “Boss” on my DVR.
Actually I still have the first season on my computer waiting for me to finally start watching it. I believe I win.
I tend to save up and watch my week’s worth of DVRed shows on Saturday playing them in the background while I work at home. I will DVR and then watch certain shows as soon as possible, like Walking Dead, but that’s just because my friends on Facebook are spoiler dropping assholes.
I know no one, nor have i heard of anyone who has a nielsens box…..
I was contacted about 6 years ago by Nielsen asking me to have one installed in my house. I was moving the following month so I didn’t end up doing it; but would have otherwise. We need more family’s not contributing to the shit CBS puts on TV that isn’t football.
I know for a fact that TiVo had a Neilsen program a few years ago that went straight through the TiVo. I suspect they now just automatically share your information with Neilsen without an opt-in.
I don’t see many sadsacks like myself. My wife and I tape many more shows than we could ever have the time to watch, yet we just find it impossible to drop a series. We’re currently about a month and a half back on programming. Our TiVo is so full that we have to delete many of the shows and load them into our Hulu+ queue to watch. Absolutely ridiculous. So we’ll get to the May finales sometime in July…if we’re lucky.