DVR vs. no DVR (and other things)
 

With Nielsen's recent announcement that they will FINALLY start including DVR users among their 9,000 "Nielsen families," I'm wondering if certain shows will see their ratings decrease or increase. In particular, I wonder if there's a correlation between "Arrested Development" viewership and DVR usage.

I have a DVR but I only watch Arrested on DVD, so I guess the numbers wouldn't go up at all if I was being tracked.

I have a DVR and did not watch or TiVo AD. Have no plans on getting the DVDs either.

[Off Topic] Wow, Mr. Snider, first the Provo Herald and now a DVD Reviewer. Keen. Welcome to the board. :wave: [/Off Topic]

I don't think Nielsen including DVRs is going to change things all that much. It isn't all DVRs, it is still certain families/demos they select, so all the results will still be skewed, and not likely to change much.

But yes, there is probably a strong correalation to DVR/AD, just not among Nielsen families.

I agree. The Neilsen families seem to be all about reality programming and sit-coms that use the same joke over and over again. I hope I'm wrong and AD gets huge numbers with the addition of DVRs to the ratings.

Well, that's the thing. Though the Nielsen families tend to be middle-of-the-road and boring, DVR users tend to be different. And now Nielsen is infusing its families with new lifeblood. They're cycling out some of the old families -- enough to make room for some DVR households.

As of this week, 60 of the 9,000 Nielsen families have DVRs, and that number will increase 100 every month until the ratio of DVR to non-DVR households in the Nielsen 9,000 matches the ratio nationwide. (It's about 7 percent of all American households that have DVRs, so that's about 630 Nielsen families that will need to be.) And in theory, as DVR usage increases nationwide, Nielsen will adjust its ratios to match it. So though right now the Nielsen families are dominated by average, "mainstream" choices, perhaps it will begin to change subtly as DVR users' habits are recorded.

I have a DVR and have never watched AD. Did I miss the memo?

Two DVRs, have both seasons on DVD, and watch each week in HD. :)

I have a DVR and do not watch it.

Two DVRs and I've never seen <i>Arrested Development</i>. I can't get my local Fox affiliate in clearly.

I have a DVR and I watch AD.

Two DVRs, both seasons on DVD, and watch each week's episode twice in HD. :)

two dvr's, never seen AD..

One DVR, have both seasons on DVD, records both reruns and new episodes of the show, watches the show as it airs and again immediately after, sometimes will marathon the dvd during long breaks of new episodes, posts about how I love the show and quotes my favorite lines in the weekly threads, thinks about funny things that happened during the show during inappropriate times like while on the train and giggles quietly to himself.

I have one & watch AD... It's scheduled in to record all episodes.

I think this will affect some shows greatly. For instance, The Office hasn't been getting good ratings, but TiVo shows it listed in the top 20 most TiVo'd programs weekly.

Have a DVR and watch Arrested Development. I always record the episodes (in HD, of course) and watch them later because I hate commercials.

So far, we have 77 people with DVRs to 14 with no DVR. 56% of those responding with DVRs watch while 35% of those responding without DVRs do. That's a 21% difference. Mind you, I understand just how flawed our sample is. It's kind of obvious when the DVR owners outnumber those without one when apparently only 7% of the nation have a DVR. Still, let's project this out just for giggles.

If I'm running the numbers right, it looks like it's around a 5% bump to the ratings when you account for the higher viewership among DVR owners. Would 5% change AD's fate?

Look at the numbers this way: So far, 51 people say they watch "Arrested Development." Of those 51, 45 have DVRs, compared with 6 who don't. In other words, a vast majority of the people who do watch AD have DVRs. Which means the vast majority of actual AD viewers AREN'T BEING COUNTED. The percentage of people who watch AD without benefit of a DVR is very small -- and those are the only people Nielsen has been counting!

This survey isn't scientific, obviously, but it starts to confirm what I suspected: A lot of people DO watch "Arrested Development," but since those people have DVRs, Nielsen has been ignoring them. Nielsen only counts the people who watch it "live," and that group constitutes a very, very small part of AD's audience.

I wrote something on my blog (http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog.php) about Nielsen's newfound interest in DVR users, and what it could mean for ratings. (What it could mean for advertisers, since many DVR users skip commercials, is another matter altogether.) It will be interesting to see what happens as Nielsen improves its monitoring of America's viewing habits.

Or it means that the vast majority of people who take television seriously enough to post in this forum have DVRs.

If you notice, of those that don't watch AD, 80% have DVRs. Across the whole poll, 84% of respondants have DVRs, a percentage that is probably close to 10x that of the nationwide percentage.

Plus, this website is not a good representation of the American public. This sites results will be heavily skewed toward a show like AD. That being said, I have a DVR and dont watch Arrested Development.

I was going to mention this. I don't see a special link between "AD" and DVRs.

Heck, I have a DVR and record "Reba" everyweek... does that mean anything special? Don't answer that. ;)

But that is just it, Tivo tracks all their users, Nielsen cherry-picks theirs.

5% increase in viewership numbers would be about a quarter million more, correct? So it wouldn't topple the big three but would stand a better chance against the WB and UPN.

I have DVR but only watches Arrested once a while.

I have no DVR and I dont watch AD, so there.