Today we take for granted all of the varieties of TV ratings we deal with on a daily basis, such as Live, Live+ Same Day, C3, C7 etc., etc. But there was a time – not too long ago – when all these ways of counting how many people actually viewed would have seemed a bit too much, if not absurd.  

While it is difficult to precisely pinpoint “when and where everything changed”, perhaps a good starting point is the 1999 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, where TIVO (and Replay TV) introduced the ground-breaking Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In one fell swoop, the traditional “time-shifting” technology of the VCR was stood on its head by the raw computing power of DVRs, and then with the introduction of Dual Tuners a few years later (that allowed viewers to effortlessly record and tune at the same time), our entire concept of “viewing” changed forever.

Today, DVRs are in roughly one-half of all TV homes, and their impact on cable TV audience delivery can be seen in the latest Rentrak ratings for the month of April, 2014. Across 200+ cable networks, the Live-Only average audience viewing on a Total Day basis is a little north of 29.5 Million HHs. If we allow for time-shifting over the next 15 days, cable viewing rises to nearly 33.7 Million HHs – an increase of 14%:

Over the past several years, there has been a healthy (if sometimes contentious) dialogue between media buyers and sellers as to how much viewing beyond Live should be part of the standard negotiated rating. It is not our intention to get in the middle of that debate (which, today, has settled more or less on the Live+3 Days), but rather provide a degree of insight into the dynamics of cable DVR audiences.

For the month of April, 2014, Total Day Cable time-shifted DVR viewing (i.e., out to 15 days) represented about 4.1 Million homes above and beyond Live viewing only. And of that 4.1 Million, 55% occurred the same day as the live telecast; an additional 25% occurred between 1 to 3 days after the live telecast; and the remainder occurred between 4 and 15 days:

Another way to look at DVR time-shifted viewing is on a cumulative basis, and you can see from the graph below that 81% of Cable’s Total Day time shifted viewing occurs within 3 days of the live telecast; 92% by seven days; and the remainder by 15 days:

We took a further look at DVR time-shifted viewing by cable genre. In comparing how much 15-Day DVR time-shifted viewing added to live viewing (on a percentage basis), we found the following:

Not surprisingly, Premium Cable viewing received the largest percent boost (~22%) from DVR time-shifted viewing (15 Days). After all, this is content that viewers paid extra for, so there is an incentive to record and playback certain shows. The same incentive may be at play for Multicultural programs as well (~20%), which includes content from home countries outside the U.S., such as Japan TV, GMA Pinoy (the Philippines) and MTV India. But, perhaps, there is more than just a pecuniary interest in recording such programming. These niche channels are cable-casting to expatriates in America, so their desire to stay abreast of (and record) home country culture can be quite profound.

As for those who say, “The humanities are dying in America,” it is with some pleasure to report that both the “Music” and “Arts & Culture” genres are also on the high end of DVR usage (~18% and ~17% respectively.)

There’s another saying in America… “News grows old fast,” and that is certainly reflected in the DVR data for cable. Live News viewing receives only an additional ~8% DVR lift after 15 days, and the “Sports” genre only slightly higher at ~9%. When the game is over, it’s time to move on to the next, not to re-wind the past, especially with so much cable sports content refreshed daily, 365 days a year!

— Written By: Jonathan Sims, VP Media Research, Viamedia