“House” “Lost” “The Office” Top Timeshifted Programs List
Our favorite ratings-tracking company, Nielsen Media Research, has released its first batch of the most “timeshifted” network broadcast programs. Timeshifting, for those still living a reel-to-reel lifestyle, is essentially recording a program to watched on your own schedule. People have been doing this since the mid-80s when a rocket scientist first cracked the “VCR Timer Code” allowing people to finally program their video recorders to start and stop on command. This audience was largely ignored. Now that the VCR has gone the way of the dodo and replaced by the incredibly friendly and easy to use DVR, suddenly those viewers (the timeshifters) became important… kinda (its not like these people are acutally watching commercials, which is for what the advertisers are looking).
Let’s get to the numbers: House, Lost, American Idol and CSI all had between 2.1 and 2.7 million more viewers when timeshifters were included. In terms of percentage increase The Office and Lost scored the biggest boost from the “I’ll watch it later” crowd getting a 31.5% and 22.8% increase respectively.
While typing this my boss brought up the good point that these shows will probably see an increase in product placement which, as anyone who has ever watched The Office can attest, is probably right on the money.
Get the full details by clicking here. Thanks for the tip, Paul.
