Last week, the Neilsen folks made public for the first time viewership figures for prime time TV shows that include people who watched the show up to seven days later on DVR. The results were pretty interesting, in that two of the week's top-watched shows - House and Lost - gained over two million viewers when the DVR watchers are added in.
When looking at the percentage of viewers gained by adding DVR playback, a number of NBC shows got some good news. Scrubs, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights each saw viewer gains of 15 percent or more, while The Office was the percentage gain leader with numbers that rose over 30 percent.
What all this means is hard to say. Given the propensity of DVR viewers to skip over commercials, ad buyers are resistant to shell out more money for viewers who are less likely to see their spots. The networks, meanwhile, point to the increase in viewers and note that, to some extent, advertisers are getting free exposure due to rates set by traditional ratings.
How this will all play out - especially with upfronts looming - remains to be seen. I imagine the new ratings numbers will help the networks decide which shows to keep - assuming they can work out the money end with advertisers. Speaking from personal experience, while we tend to skip over ads when we're watching recorded programming, we do stop if we see somethingt that looks interesting or is from a series (such as the Mac and PC ads from Apple). Not sure how you'd quantify that for ad sales purposes, outside of improving the DVR to report back when viewers do watch the ads.
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