How does dvr affect tv ratings

After a certain time each morning, the overnight ratings would come in from Nielsen, and someone from the network would recite the numbers onto a dedicated line, which then was available for anyone who wanted to dial in and hear how shows performed.

Theoretically, a TV outlet could count the digital audience of its show for as long as it wants. Keep reading. Rating: Ratings are essentially percentages, measuring the portion of a given group — be it households, adults or women — watching a given show.

Share: The percentage of a given group who are watching TV at that time and are tuned into a given program. Total viewers: Pretty self-explanatory — the average number of people watching a program in any given minute while it airs. Overnight metered market ratings: These are the first ratings released each morning — or they were, anyway, until Oct.

They had been useful for gauging live events since they measure programs instead of just time periods. They include both live viewing from the previous night and delayed viewing until 3 a.

Fast nationals are generally pretty accurate for entertainment programs, with occasional small adjustments in the finals. Live-plus Same-day ratings with three additional days of DVR and on-demand viewing added in. Logo text. Related Stories. All Rights reserved. Close the menu Logo text. This Is Us. The Big Bang Theory. The Good Doctor. New Amsterdam. Modern Family. You might remember the notorious Janet Jackson "nip slip" during the Super Bowl halftime performance. After the incident, TiVo released a statement calling it "the most TiVo'ed moment," as TiVo users paused and replayed that clip more times than any other moment in the history of TiVo up to that point [source: Reuters ].

While that in itself is interesting, the underlying point is even more revealing: TiVo and other DVRs collect your viewing information, and DVR companies are even using that data to release their own ratings numbers for recorded programs. How do DVR ratings work, and who's measuring them? Let's take a look at the most common DVR ratings services and how they measure viewing behavior.

Whether we're talking Nielsen numbers or ratings reported from DVR data, one of the biggest challenges with DVR ratings is that they don't come in right away. If you TiVo "Fringe" on Friday night but don't watch the recording until Tuesday, the network's ratings can't show your viewing activity until that time. Because of the time-shifting nature of DVRs, networks are now interested in ratings during a time range rather than just the date and time that the show aired.

Most networks use Nielsen's Live Plus service to track ratings. Live Plus looks at who watched shows on their DVRs within different time frames. Each one looks at a broader timeframe, so Live-Plus-Same-Day looks not only at who was watching when the show aired, but also who watched the show that day and the next.

Live-Plus-Three and Live-Plus-Seven track who watched within three and seven days of the original airing, respectively.

When Nielsen first rolled out its Live Plus service, network executives were uncertain, but it's become an industry standard. These Live Plus ratings can make a big difference when a large portion of a show's fans are watching on their DVRs. In when Live-Plus-Seven was starting to gain traction with networks, 23 percent of 18 to year-olds watching "The Office" did so on their DVRs within a week of the first run.

A January episode of "Fringe" jumped an entire ratings point based only on Live-Plus-Three data [source: Anders ]. The Live Plus ratings system has changed not only how networks report ratings numbers, but advertising as well.