According to Nielsen data, the vast majority of people who use a PVR to time-shift their viewing watch most programs within 3 days of their original air date.This is how you know I don't live in a Nielsen household. As I've pointed out in the past, one of my favorite things to do with my PVR is to record a whole bunch of episodes of a show and then sit down one Sunday afternoon for a marathon. I haven't watched a single episode of Lost this season yet, which makes avoiding the TV Guide magazines in the supermarket aisle a contact sport.
I've even got movies I recorded last year sitting on my hard drive. I guess this is one of the main advantages to home-made PVR. I have as much hard drive space as I need, and I can compress recordings to DivX or WMV to fit even more recordings on that hard drive.
Okay, back to the news. Nielsen reports that 78 percent of all viewers watch shows recorded during prime time within two days, and 84 percent within three days of the original broadcast.
According to Nielsen Media Research, among television households with DVRs, more than 78 percent of all viewers who watch recorded broadcast prime time shows play them back within two days, while 84 percent view their recorded programs within three days of broadcast.
Nielsen also found that PVR users accounted for almost 23% of all prime-time TV viewers during the study period (the last week of September).
1. I know how you feel about avoiding recaps of old episodes. I didn't watch 24 last season until it was over so I could have a marathon. One day I was checking out TVs at Best Buy and on all of the TVs they started showing some 24 clips they from lots of the previously aired episodes. I briskly exited the store.
Posted at 10:58AM on Nov 10th 2006 by mroach