Audience measurement company, Nielsen Media Research, has begun including viewing of DVR-recorded programs in its national TV audience estimates (note: the company is expected to begin tracking viewing of VOD content next June). The company's ratings are extrapolated from the viewing habits of 9,000 households, of which only 60 have DVR's. However, Nielsen is expected to gradually increase the number of DVR households in its sample to around 800--a proportion roughly representative of the current penetration of DVR's among the viewing public as a whole--by the start of the fall, 2006 television season. "Nielsen is keeping pace with the evolving ways that people watch television, thereby ensuring that our ratings continue to be accurate and reliable," Sara Erichson, Nielsen's general manager of national services, said in a prepared statement. "The introduction of audience estimates for DVR is a major milestone in ratings history and will provide the most detailed information ever on how and when people watch television."
Since December 26th, Nielsen has been assigning three separate ratings to all shows and networks:
- "Live Ratings," which track viewers who watch programs when they initially air.
- "Live+Same Day Ratings," which track both viewers who watch programs live and viewers who play back those programs on a DVR the same day that they air.
- "Live+7 Day Ratings," which track viewers who watch programs live and viewers who play back those programs on a DVR within a week of their initial broadcast.
Nielsen's season-to-date viewership estimates will now be based on a combination of Live+Same Day viewing for the current two weeks and Live+7 Day viewing for all weeks prior, the company says. The Live and Live+Same Day ratings are being delivered to the company's clients on a daily basis, while the Live+7 Day ratings will be delivered to clients two weeks following the end of each Monday-Sunday week.
Nielsen's first "Live+Same Day Ratings" (the ratings tracked viewing on December 26th) were issued last week, and differ only slightly from the company's ratings of live viewing for the same day. The program whose Live+Same Day Ratings showed the largest gain--31,000 additional viewers or a 0.5% increase--over its live ratings was Fox's "House"; NBC's "Medium," meanwhile, showed a 0.3% gain; while CBS's "CSI: Miami," "Out of Practice" and "Two and a Half Men" each showed 0.1% gains.
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