[Having an HD-DVR has certainly changed my viewing habits. I now watch almost nothing live except breaking news and commercial-free programming from PBS, Voom, Turner Classic Movies, etc. Everything else comes off the DVR when it fits in my schedule. I skip all the commercials. This gives every program that "clean feed" TVRO feel. It also save a lot of time. I can watch 3 hours of TV in 2 hours of viewing time. I now watch some programs that I simply would not watch if I had to sit through commercials. I would say I am watching more TV programs than before, but because I dump the commercials I am not spending any additional time watching TV.]
July 31, 2006 Does a DVR Boost Viewing Hours or Not? By ALEX MINDLIN NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/technology/31drill.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=print 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. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
