I’m trying to gain a full understanding about how the DVR measurement works.

For purposes of simplicity let’s say that there are 100 American Idol viewers who watched a one hour Idol airing via DVR on the same night it aired. And then:

25 of them fast-forwarded through nothing
25 of them fast-forwarded through commercials only
25 of them fast forwarded through 15 minutes of the actual program
25 of them fast forwarded through 30 minutes of the actual program

My question is this: in the reporting for LIVE+SD, will we see 100 SD DVR viewers or a number lower than 100? What # would we see in the reports?
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Assuming I hear back, I will follow-up here. It's a great thing to know and I had *not* been assuming the program viewing #s reported for DVR viewing were excluding out people's fast-forwarding time, and that's an important thing to get right so I appreciate the pushback.

We do know the data for the programs. If it's removing fast forwarded minutes — not just for commercials, which presumably wouldn't matter to program viewing — but of the show itself, that would mean that actual DVR viewing, especially for shows like American Idol, which some people definitely fast-forward through program parts is higher than what we actually see.

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You are completely wrong. Perhaps even dangerously so since your kinda saying Nielsen is misrepresenting its viewing figures to a multi-billion dollar industry.

People who fast forward thru program or commercial minutes on a DVR don't get credit for having viewed those minutes.

And Bill is correct it was same as “live” not “live+SD” which drives home pretty quickly that DVR viewers *don't* generally watch commercials…

Dayparts like early morning and late night see a dip in C3 ratings vs live, not due to DVR recording (there is almost none there), but due to channel changing and placement of commercial pods within a program.

Based on DVR measurements for programs, it seems fairly clear that Nielsen is including people who fast-forward through programs. I don't know how they accomplish “only commercials not fast forwarded through” on the C+3 side, or even if they really do.

What we saw in the single week last fall where C+3 numbers were available widely was that the C+3 *commercial* ratings were about the same as the LIVE *program* ratings.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2007/10/16/c3-commerc…

The caveat being that we saw only a single week, and while most shows had similar numbers, some varied from +8% to -6%. I'm not comfortable drawing conclusions from a single week, but it's all we have.

We drilled down a bit more on a single show to see that almost no DVR viewers watched commercials as common sense would dictate:

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2007/10/17/nobody-wat…

I must make an important quibble about your definition of C3 measurement. It includes not only live commercial viewing (within Nielsen measurement limitations) but also 3 day DVR *commercial* viewing, not program viewing.

Advertisers aren't giving the networks any kind of pass on this stuff. They are agreeing to pay for DVR playback viewers only if they don't fast forward thru the commercials.

The networks can tout live plus same or seven day program ratings all they want, but it's not what advertisers are writing their deals on.

Dayparts like early morning and late night see a dip in C3 ratings vs live, not due to DVR recording (there is almost none there), but due to channel changing and placement of commercial pods within a program.