Post by dkennedy on Aug 2, 2006 4:39:40 GMT -5
Does a DVR Boost Viewing Hours or Not?
July 31, 2006
By Alex Mindlin, New York Times
It seems that adults in households that have digital video recorders watch less TV than adults in the general population, according to a recent analysis by Mediamark Research, an audience-measurement firm.
That finding, which comes from in-home interviews conducted by Mediamark with 26,000 adults between March 2005 and May 2006, seems to conflict with the contentions of the major broadcast networks.
Researchers for the networks told advertisers in November that people in households with a DVR watched 12 percent more hours of TV a day than those without. Those researchers had argued that that tendency counterbalanced the possibility that DVR users would skip past ads.
David F. Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS, said the Mediamark numbers were unreliable, because they were derived from people’s often-low reports of their own TV watching. The figures suggesting that adults who use a DVR watch more television come from Arbitron’s 2,000-person machine-recorded survey in the spring of 2005, but it covered only the Houston market.
Mr. Poltrack added that, according to CBS’s proprietary research, people with DVR’s, whatever their level of TV viewing, tended to watch more television after getting the devices than they did before.
July 31, 2006
By Alex Mindlin, New York Times
It seems that adults in households that have digital video recorders watch less TV than adults in the general population, according to a recent analysis by Mediamark Research, an audience-measurement firm.
That finding, which comes from in-home interviews conducted by Mediamark with 26,000 adults between March 2005 and May 2006, seems to conflict with the contentions of the major broadcast networks.
Researchers for the networks told advertisers in November that people in households with a DVR watched 12 percent more hours of TV a day than those without. Those researchers had argued that that tendency counterbalanced the possibility that DVR users would skip past ads.
David F. Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS, said the Mediamark numbers were unreliable, because they were derived from people’s often-low reports of their own TV watching. The figures suggesting that adults who use a DVR watch more television come from Arbitron’s 2,000-person machine-recorded survey in the spring of 2005, but it covered only the Houston market.
Mr. Poltrack added that, according to CBS’s proprietary research, people with DVR’s, whatever their level of TV viewing, tended to watch more television after getting the devices than they did before.