Being the "third world ratings website" that one commenter recently referred to us as, we don't get much access to the demographic data for DVR playback. I've been seeing it recently in the weekly ratings releases from Fox and since Nielsen has delays with the release of the most recent batch of DVR data (for the week of November 17-23 -- impacting not just third world websites like us, but big networks who pay big bucks for the data like Fox), I thought I'd take a look at the difference between the 18-49 data and the overall data.
The table below is Live+7 day DVR viewing for the week of November 10-16:
| DVR Playback Rank | Show | Net | DVR viewers (000) | 18-49 DVR Viewers (000) | 18-49 DVR % | 18-49 DVR Rank |
| 1 | GREY’S ANATOMY | ABC | 4,239 | 2,815 | 66.41% | 1 |
| 2 | HOUSE | FOX | 3,958 | 2,328 | 58.82% | 3 |
| 3 | OFFICE | NBC | 3,153 | 2,470 | 78.34% | 2 |
| 4 | DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES | ABC | 3,061 | 1,963 | 64.13% | 5 |
| 5 | CSI | CBS | 3,053 | 1,796 | 58.83% | 6 |
| 6 | FRINGE | FOX | 2,894 | 1,724 | 59.57% | 7 |
| 7 | HEROES | NBC | 2,893 | 2,006 | 69.34% | 4 |
| 8 | SURVIVOR: GABON | CBS | 2,681 | 1,628 | 60.72% | 9 |
| 9 | Bones | FOX | 2,559 | 1,536 | 60.02% | 10 |
| 10 | THE Mentalist | CBS | 2,503 | ? | ? |
I had already assumed judging from the weekly DVR reports that DVR viewing accounted for significant increases to the 18-49 ratings, and that's certainly true. All of the top ten shows increased their 18-49 ratings by more than one full 18-49 ratings point, and Grey's Anatomy increased over two 18-49 ratings points as a result of DVR viewing.
The biggest takeaway for me is that the 18-49 population represents less of the total DVR viewing than I imagined. I had figured on average around 75% of DVR playback came via 18-49 year olds. But at least in this limited sample of highly DVRd shows it's closer to 60%. Only The Office with over 78% was in the 75% zone, with Heroes in the neighborhood with over 69%
Since we don't have full demographic data, I can't say what portion of the non 18-49 playback is under 18, and what portion is 50 and over, but I think it's reasonable to conclude a good chunk of playback is coming from the 50+ crowd. It doesn't surprise me that over 40% of CSI DVR viewing was outside the 18-49 demographic. But House and Fringe? That was a surprise to me.
The rankings among the top 10 shows were very similar. For the week of November 10-16, there was only one difference. The Mentalist was not among the top 10 shows viewed on DVR by 18-49 year olds. 30 Rock, which was fourteenth overall, with 2.144 million DVR viewers was eighth among 18-49 year olds with 1.687 million.
Well, since the 18-49 demographic only makes up about 44% of the 2+ demographic (I think), their contribution to DVR viewing is still overrepresented by a huge margin. So your original instinct was not so bad, was it?
Ray, pretty close. The 18-49 population is 131.97 million out of 289.95 million total 2+ (45.5%) for the 2008-2009 season according to the Nielsen estimates.
while 18-49 DVR viewing is definitely still overrepresented versus the overall population by a huge margin, my instinct was it would be more overrepresented than it is.
My instinct was off (at least in the case of the above data) by more than 10% on average and much greater in some cases. Had you asked me for a guess on percentage of House and Fringe DVR viewers who were 18-49, I probably would’ve guessed as high as 80%.
Robert, is there a way to get the data beyond the top 10? I was curious where Chuck and TSCC fall in the list.
Frank, doubtful. And even if we could I don’t know that it would be worth producing the data regularly since despite my comments it does very closely mirror the overall list. You can figure for the week above, Chuck is definitely in the top 20, and even if 100% of TSCC’s DVR viewers are 18-49, it won’t matter the tiniest little sliver as far as a season 3 goes…
The data was only particularly interesting to me in the sense that it suggests DVR viewing is better spread through the mainstream than I thought.
What about Smallville? Do you by any chance have the Live+7 numbers? The Nov 20th episode “Bride” was their last before the long hiatus and one of the most anticipated for this season. So it would be great if we knew how it did.
I think your guess about The Mentalist will be right, over time. As a new show, it’s possible people are just getting introduced to its charms. As they become hooked, it will get DVR’d more rather then risk missing it.
On the 50+ crowd, this does not surprise me – Comcast et al have made it so easy, especially in the sales process, older folks are comfy with it. I think one of the barriers to DVR’s before the cable companies/satellite companies was that you had to go out and buy something and hook it up. So, a higher percentage of videophiles were getting them. Now, comcast just shows up and says “here’s the remote to your DVR”.