The folks at TiVo have seen an increase in broadcast viewing, at least among TV lovers who own TiVo digital video recorders. Live viewing is up a bit, but time-shifted viewing is up even more. TiVo’s StopWatch ratings service provides data for both program ratings and commercial ratings for various lengths of time-shifting, as shown in the chart below.
September 2008 vs. September 2007
| Viewing |
Program Rating Fall ’08/Fall ’07 % Change |
Commercial Rating Fall ’08/Fall ’07 % Change |
| Total | 13% | 9% |
| Live Viewing (5-second interval) | 5% | 5% |
| Time-shifted viewing | 24% | 23% |
| Near-live viewing (within 1 hour) | 20% | 19% |
| 1- to 6-hour delay | 32% | 34% |
| 6- to 24-hour delay | 20% | 20% |
| 24- to 48-hour delay | 29% | 30% |
| 48- to 72-hour delay | 29% | 27% |
| 72-hour to 7-day delay | 26% | 26% |
| 7- to 14-day delay | 27% | 26% |
| Source: TiVo StopWatch ratings service | ||
Reporting percentages alone is likely to be misleading given that the base total time spent viewing live programming is much larger than the time spent watching time-shifted programs. Percentages alone do not tell us whether the 5% increase in minutes of live viewing represents a larger number in total minutes than the 23% increase in minutes of time-shifted viewing. Showing the actual number of minutes would make for a more meaningful representation of the data.