DVR Playbacks of TV Season Premier Week

From the programming insider email today:

DVR Playback – Week of Sept. 17:
Based on ratings for the week of Sept. 17 (one week prior to the official start of the 2007-08 season), the season-premiere of CBS’ Survivor: China was the most recorded program of the week. According to the final Nielsen live plus 7-day ratings, Survivor: China was recorded and played back by 2.12 million viewers. Second was the season-premiere of Fox’s Family Guy.

Here is a listing of the top 10 most recorded and played back programs for the week of Sept. 17:

DVR Total Playback Audience
1. Survivor: China (CBS, season premiere): 2.12 million
2. Family Guy (Fox, season premiere): 1.84
3. Prison Break (Fox, season premiere): 1.55
4. Back To You Fox, premiere): 1.46
5. Come Rain/Come Shine (ABC): 1.26
6. Big Brother – Tuesday (CBS, season finale): 1.25
7. The Simpsons (Fox, season premiere): 1.09
8. Kid Nation (CBS, premiere): 1.01 million
9. K-Ville (Fox, premiere): 993,000
10. Shark (CBS, season premiere); 982,000

I was suprised to see some of those shows in the top of the list because they were not watched with a very high rating. What this might mean is that they were not important enough to watch live but they were curious enough to record them and play them back to see if they were good or bad. What will be telling is if they drop off the radar in the next few weeks if people decide they didn’t like them and don’t record them in the future.

I am always suprised to see so many CBS shows, when as a singly yuppie female I don’t like anything CBS produces. It’s all reality crap or crime cop shows, and I am not in to either. There is noticeably no NBC shows on this list, even though heroes has a huge  following and NBC shows aren’t available on iTunes anymore either. Does this mean that they all watched them live? Or are they using the NBC site downloads? Or are they just not that important? I am also always suprised at the following of the Simpsons and Family Guy when I don’t relate well to them either.

Another note about these stats, when you look at who owns a DVR machine it is most certainly a young male dominated group. (probably 70% male and 30% female is my guess) This is probably the DVR stats for the 25-40 yr old male (tech oriented) group more than anything else.

If you have a DVR what did you record?

New TV Season Premier Week

I will be trying to review the shows I can catch this week on the blog here. I am interested to see what can hold my cynical attention span and what won’t. I am also curious how many people will be watching them online this year. Most all the free networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) have said they will make shows either viewable or downloadable from online. What I wonder is if people will use this as their primary way to see shows or if it will be the backup when something better was on last night and they didn’t buy a tivo to record everything. I have a feeling that people use online viewing in a few ways. One, as a primary way to see things on networks they don’t recieve for some reason. Second, as a secondary viewing for shows that didn’t make the cut in real time last nigh but people will be talking about them so you still have to know what happens. Third, as a time waster either at work or at home, a way to justify procrastinating on those things in life that you really should be doing.

So as for what this means to the networks? Keep selling ads on these TV shows online, because it increases your reach and crossover with different audeinces, and increases the number of eyeballs each advertiser gets. So hopefully it increases convience for the viewers and money for the networks at the same time.