Nearly as many people watch Mad Men via DVR as watch it live, as the show nearly doubled its live viewership within 7 days of DVR viewing.
Mad Men topped the rankings of the year's shows in the percentage increase between Live viewership and Live + 7 Day viewership measurements by a very wide margin.
It is interesting that 8 of the top 10 shows in the annual rankings were from cable networks. We generally do not see Live + 7 Day ratings for cable programs and so cannot include them in our regular weekly top DVR'd shows ratings posts. When we first began doing DVR ratings posts 3 years ago, cable shows were typically not anywhere near the top of the rankings (when we used to get cable Live+7 data for a limited number of cable shows).
Why are these percentages so much higher than those in our regular weekly top DVR rankings? Nielsen calculated the increase between Live and Live + 7 Day viewership, our regular weekly posts note the difference between Live + Same Day and Live + 7 Day ratings/viewership.
Top 10 Timeshifted Primetime TV Programs
| Rank | Program | Network | % Increase of Timeshifted Viewing |
| 1 | Mad Men | AMC | 88.7 |
| 2 | Sons Of Anarchy | FX | 62.7 |
| 3 | Justified | FX | 61.9 |
| 4 | Lie To Me (Mon) | FOX | 61.5 |
| 5 | Leverage | TNT | 61.4 |
| 6 | Covert Affairs | USA | 61.2 |
| 7 | Psych | USA | 59.1 |
| 8 | Royal Pains | USA | 54.5 |
| 9 | White Collar | USA | 54.5 |
| 10 | Heroes | NBC | 53.0 |
-
Source: The Nielsen Company. *Primetime TSV%: Data from January 1, 2010 – November 14, 2010, regularly scheduled programs. Percent increase in rating is based on absolute difference between Live Person 2+ Ratings and Live + 7. A program must reach at least a 1.0 Live +7 P2+ rating and have at least 4 telecasts.
