I guess what I’m asking is if these guys were prioritizing correctly, wouldn’t it have already changed?

Two reasons:

1. They are and it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t get publicized

2. They’re media whores, plain and simple. As far as the research/ratings side of the business goes, they’re the two biggest media whores by an immense margin.

And that link sent me nowhere but the MSNBC home page.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#33500601

Is this common?

BTW, Nielsen DOES measure DVR viewing one week out. The point of this article is that not many more commercials get watched because of the extra week of DVR viewing over the commercials that were watched Live and the same night the program aired on DVR.

While the subject of this article is arcane inside baseball for the TV industry “We switched from Live program ratings for ad pricing to C+3 commercial ratings and the sky didn’t fall”, the effect will be to generate confusion of the “Hey, DVR viewing (meaning the difference between Live+SD and Live+7 program ratings) really does help shows” variety across the media and certain fans.

Bill has a gene where PR people working their magic on others brings out the beast in him. There is no denying it.

That said, if there were C, C+SD and C3 regularly and commonly reported in the press, and we said “there’s really only a very small bump between C+SD and C3″ nobody would think it was harsh.

But some fans of shows will inappropriately put a lot of hope in “Live+7″ numbers saving their shows,and articles like the one in the Times add to that problem.

The fact is networks can and WILL spin this any way they can to their advantage. Why aren’t folks like Wurtzel and Poltrack, instead spending more time using the research they have to sell their own networks on changing things (like your example with local news promos, which is spot on!) rather than spending so much time with mainstream media in hopes that it will convince the advertisers to drink the kool-aid?

I guess I’m looking a few years down the road. If DVR viewing (+3 or +7) is boosting ratings, even if only by a few percentage points, while advertisers may not be valuing that kind of viewing now, might that type of viewership become increasingly acceptable in the future (and therefore actually lead to significant gains in revenue)? Such that DVR-viewing for Dollhouse would lead more than 4% revenue gains? While I’m not a Dollhouse fan, it seems that equation doesn’t really make much sense, and that the 4% gain has to go up. Why hasn’t it? If it should, the question is: how much?

I guess the real question is whether TV is in trouble because it needs to shift the way it’s doing everything, or whether we are in a transition period. Of course, DVR is just one part of the equation; the age of viewers and year-to-year ratings comparisons (with DVR) are probably more relevant, I suppose.

When networks and agencies were negotiating how DVR ratings would be sold the debate was always between Live ratings and C3 ratings. Live+SD ratings were never seriously part of the discussion. So there is some logic to leaving them out of this story even though that’s what your’re used to seeing in PR.

Not yet but I believe that day is coming. If we ever get to a world where a majority of all primetime viewing happens via DVR you will see the LAST spot in every break become the most expensive.

Have you noticed – I’m sure you have – that local news promos always come at the end of commercial breaks? It’s because that’s the least valuable part of the break. That will be a thing of the past as that real estate becomes more prized. Promo time will have to be wedged in mid-break.

Of course, when the latter happens that show usually ends up being taken off my event list as well.

Let me begin by saying I do not have a DVR. Do people who DVR shows to watch later, actually watch the commercials? I thought one of the benefits of watching a show via DVR was fast forwarding through the commercials. I know I would do that if I had a DVR.

Right now, even when I’m watching a show, I pretty much avoid a commercial, either by reading the newspaper or magazine, or using the facilities, or flipping through the channels (remotes are great), or simply just hitting the mute button until the show comes back on.

Are there any similar plans in the US?

Whether you can use the numbers internally to predict anything, I don’t know. I was just pointing out that whether it’s possible or not isn’t something that can yet be determined, but that even the current extra money that can be found in the numbers, even if it’s only a 1% or 2% increase in ad revenue, is significant.

And it is free money if it’s money you would not be getting if you were not beating the bushes for numbers that get you back some of the what decreased viewership is losing for you.

I think we are so knee-jerk quick to react to the ridiculous claims by moronic fans that DVR numbers will be a panacea for their favorite show–and they are totally ridiculous claims–that we are being just as ridiculous by saying the numbers are totally meaningless. Even now in their infant stage they can used to produce significant revenue for the nets, as just a couple of percent in increased revenue means hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Dollhouse had a 40% increase in ratings from DVR viewing in the post that was linked. That big increase likely contributed 4% to the advertising revenue for that show. I edited the post to specifically mention Dollhouse.

My point is that it’s not going to save the show, not that the extra revenue isn’t welcome.

Dollhouse singled out, but not terribly unique. For the middle of the DVR viewing curve broadcast primetime shows getting ~20% increases from DVR viewing, that 2% extra is not going to make a difference between renewal and cancellation.

“DVR homes average 22.4% higher C+3 ratings than non-DVR homes.”

Their attempt to say “see, DVR’s boost commercial watching!” is almost certainly self selection bias nonsense.

That is, instead of comparing DVR households (which are early adopters and likely heavier TV viewers) with non-DVR households, the interesting comparison (which is impossible) is how many broadcast TV commercials do current DVR households watch compared with to the number of commercials they watched immediately before getting DVRs.

That 40% and 4% number is for Dollhouse specifically, most shows don’t see DVR increases anywhere near that large (as a percentage). The NY times article uses the numbers 7-12% which would mean ad revenue increases in the .7-1.2% range.

When you take into account how many people choose not to watch TV live only because they have a DVR, without which they would watch their shows live, DVRs could very well be costing networks money instead of making them “free” money. With that 10% number only 1 in 10 DVR viewers would have had to watched live if DVR didn’t exist for them to see the same revenue stream, and in most cases I would imagine more than 1 in 10 DVR viewers would watch their favorite shows live if they didn’t have their DVRs.

Here it was:

One last little nugget of PR from the broadcasters was captured by Carter:

“The system even builds in a bonus for advertisers. Although the commercials are rated for only three days, networks receive program ratings for playback over seven days — and the numbers go up again. All that incremental viewing is free to the advertisers.”

A bonus to advertisers! Who knew the broadcasters were so generous? But why no numbers? That’s because leaving them out can allow you to guess there’s a hidden bonanza, but it’s not really there.

From my same conversation with the network researcher:

85% of program ratings are captured in Live+SD period
91% captured in Live+2 period
94% captured in Live+3 period
100% captured in Live+7 period

An extra 6% program viewing after 3 days, and certainly less of an increase in commercial viewing.

Break out the champagne, baby!

Anyway, my question is: is it at least true that the networks don’t have to fear the DVR? My sense is that, if it won’t save them, it’s hardly their biggest problem.

I think network ad revenue was something like 30 billion last year, so that’s 1.2 billion dollars extra that just comes from crunching and hyping one new set of numbers. So while the 40% figure might be totally bogus and worth ridicule, that doesn’t meant that the 4% number is anything close to insignificant.

It is possible that network execs do take DVR viewing into account despite it’s relatively small current significance. It would not be the first time network execs had overrated something that didn’t matter much. For whatever reason, that sort of thing does seem to happen quite a lot in television. And it would certainly explain some head scratching renewals we have seen in the past couple of seasons.

But there might also be some method to their madness. We are all trying to figure what new media will be helpful to the business of television in the coming years. Well, perhaps shows with a lot of extra people DVRing them might benefit in the following seasons from an expanded LIVE audience. We don’t really know yet, because DVRing viewing and its ramifications are too new to have any long term data on. I’m not even sure how much of that data is being collated from what they have right now. And, heck, I’m still not even sure DVRs are in enough households to even start collecting significant long term data. The number of users has expanded significantly over the past handful of years, as have the ways in which you can use your DVRs. That alone throws all previous data right out the window.

While DVR viewing may never help a show financially in the short term, it might make a good tool for helping to pick which bubble shows get renewed. Right now, if shows A, B, C, & D are all averaging the same rating, yet only one is needed to fill a hole in next fall’s schedule, then you would likely give DVR viewing a lot of weight. That only makes sense.

But what if shows A, B, & C have much better ratings than D, but D’s DVR-viewing takes it quite a bit above the others? What do you do then?

We don’t really know. Maybe you should give that some weight. Maybe not. But it might mean the show has a much better chance to grow next season than the other shows do. And since you are only renewing one of them to fill a hole anyway, why not take a chance on the show that might grow?

That all might be rubbish in the end, but who knows now? We are so far from really knowing what the DVR means as a tool for network execs (as opposed to as a tool for viewers) that I think it’s too soon to come to a definitive conclusion.

All of this being said, it is still true that no show is going to have a big swing in ad revenue from DVR viewing yet.