Once again, the most popular show after both airings of American Idol was Desperate Housewives. The Office was fourth that week, with a little less DVR viewing than normal because it was not up against a new CSI or a new Grey's Anatomy (as a result, you'll notice neither of those shows is on the list for that week).
This post ranks shows with the most absolute DVR viewing for the week ending April 20, 2008, unlike Bill's post which ranks shows with the biggest viewing increases due to DVRs. Of course tiny little insignificant CW shows with no viewing come out big on that list, but there is nothing like that to be found here. CBS did well placing eight shows on the list with Survivor: Micronesia, Criminal Minds, NCIS and Two and a Half Men being the Tiffany network's most watched shows via DVR.
ABC only placed four shows that week, with the aforementioned Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters and Boston Legal all bettering the more viewed overall Dancing with the Stars on this list.
Joining the Idol airings for FOX were the first new episode of Bones in a while, Hell's Kitchen, and the New Amsterdam finale.
In addition to The Office, NBC placed the consistently stable Medium along with Law & Order: SVU.
The Sunday airing of Big Brother that week had the highest percentage of overall DVR viewing occur on the same night I've ever seen. Over 88%! That has to be mostly time-shifting in one of its purest forms: commercial avoidance and fast forwarding through uninteresting parts of the show.
There were nine shows that didn't make this list but still had more than a million viewers via DVR: ER, Scrubs, The Biggest Loser, Big Brother-Tuesday, My Name is Earl, The Big Bang Theory, Eli Stone, Samantha Who? and the Dancing with the Stars Results show. My friend Tyra Banks didn't quite reach a million with America's Next Top Model, but was close with 994,000.
Top 20 DVR Broadcast Shows for the week ending April 20, 2008:
| Rank | Shows | Net | Live+7 (000s) | Live (000s) | DVR Audience (000s) | % increase Live to Live+7 | Live+SD (000s) | % SD Viewers of DVR total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | American Idol-TUESDAY | FOX | 24,925 | 20,908 | 4,017 | 19.2% | 23,646 | 68.16% |
| 2 | American Idol-WEDNESDAY | FOX | 24,181 | 21,373 | 2,808 | 13.1% | 23,339 | 70.01% |
| 3 | Desperate Housewives | ABC | 17,064 | 14,264 | 2,800 | 19.6% | 15,746 | 52.93% |
| 4 | OFFICE | NBC | 10,878 | 8,275 | 2,603 | 31.5% | 9,859 | 60.85% |
| 5 | SURVIVOR: MICRONESIA | CBS | 12,861 | 10,451 | 2,410 | 23.1% | 12,014 | 64.85% |
| 6 | Criminal Minds | CBS | 14,575 | 12,206 | 2,369 | 19.4% | 12,978 | 32.59% |
| 7 | NCIS | CBS | 16,282 | 14,055 | 2,227 | 15.8% | 15,128 | 48.18% |
| 8 | Two and a Half Men | CBS | 15,031 | 12,855 | 2,176 | 16.9% | 13,937 | 49.72% |
| 9 | Bones-MON 8P | FOX | 9,678 | 7,839 | 1,839 | 23.5% | 8,728 | 48.34% |
| 10 | MEDIUM | NBC | 10,987 | 9,191 | 1,796 | 19.5% | 9,758 | 31.57% |
| 11 | BROTHERS & Sisters | ABC | 11,170 | 9,542 | 1,628 | 17.1% | 10,080 | 33.05% |
| 12 | BOSTON LEGAL | ABC | 10,004 | 8,400 | 1,604 | 19.1% | 8,845 | 27.74% |
| 13 | CSI: NY | CBS | 14,649 | 13,064 | 1,585 | 12.1% | 13,429 | 23.03% |
| 14 | HELLS KITCHEN | FOX | 11,367 | 9,802 | 1,565 | 16.0% | 10,560 | 48.43% |
| 15 | Law And Order:SVU | NBC | 14,290 | 12,727 | 1,563 | 12.3% | 13,268 | 34.61% |
| 16 | How I Met Your Mother | CBS | 8,741 | 7,310 | 1,431 | 19.6% | 8,082 | 53.95% |
| 17 | NEW AMSTERDAM | FOX | 7,405 | 6,040 | 1,365 | 22.6% | 6,581 | 39.63% |
| 18 | Dancing with the Stars | ABC | 17,659 | 16,299 | 1,360 | 8.3% | 17,198 | 66.10% |
| 19 | BIG BROTHER 9-SUN | CBS | 6,649 | 5,310 | 1,339 | 25.2% | 6,493 | 88.35% |
| 20 | BIG BROTHER 9-WED | CBS | 6,415 | 5,144 | 1,271 | 24.7% | 6,087 | 74.19% |
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Yea! for New Amsterdam! It’s 8-ep. run had a consistant and high-level of DVR viewing and it continues to be the most viewed series on Fox.com. It’s been overshadowed in the “bubble” talk by shows like Eli Stone, Moonlight and Women’s Murder Club, but it has really held its own. Please renew, super pronto!
another reason BL really needs to come back
Lots of folks ask us if network executives look at DVR numbers when deciding on series renewal. My guess is if they don’t consider them directly, we can be pretty sure that many highly DVR’d shows are an indicator of relatively young, affluent viewing groups.
While we don’t have income viewing statistics ourselves, be certain that the networks do and that they are very important to them.
Just a general question: Why do you post C7 instead of C3? Are the C3 stats confidential?
We do not post C anything because we don’t get the commercial data. We do get the LIVE+7 data. There is no LIVE+3 provided by Nielsen (to us, anyway) so we can’t post it.
The Office is also number one this week. (and all weeks it airs a new episode) on HULU
But 30 Rock is #5 and BSG is #6 on Hulu for the week. Without the raw numbers, and some similar "average use" (vs. number of streams launched) it's all pretty meaningless. <br><br>I have no problem with people continuing to chime in with "it's #1 on iTunes and/or Hulu" but without the actual numbers, there's not much to make of it. My theory on why they publish no numbers is this: they aren't very big (relative to TV audience). I'll continue to speculate that's the case until they start publishing the numbers!
Robert, I'm sure you're right on the hulu/itunes numbers. If they were big, they'd brag. I read that at the end of the beta that hulu had 5 million unique users. I'm sure that number is bigger now and doesn't include the network sites. Online usage is signficant
The Office is also number one this week. (and all weeks it airs a new episode) on HULU
But 30 Rock is #5 and BSG is #6 on Hulu for the week. Without the raw numbers, and some similar “average use” (vs. number of streams launched) it's all pretty meaningless.
I have no problem with people continuing to chime in with “it's #1 on iTunes and/or Hulu” but without the actual numbers, there's not much to make of it. My theory on why they publish no numbers is this: they aren't very big (relative to TV audience). I'll continue to speculate that's the case until they start publishing the numbers!
Robert, I'm sure you're right on the hulu/itunes numbers. If they were big, they'd brag. I read that at the end of the beta that hulu had 5 million unique users. I'm sure that number is bigger now and doesn't include the network sites. Online usage is signficant