Dave and Thomas Daily Timekillers

Seeing a DVR in a household today is rather common. TV executives, however, would lead you to believe that the personal recording devices circumvent their ratings systems, ruin their ad revenues as people fly past commercials and pose a rather bleak future for television in general.

The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 — helping some marginal shows become hits. It is also that more people seem content to sit through the commercials than networks once thought.

These factors combined mean DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue.

“The DVR was going to kill television,” said Andy Donchin, director of media investment for the ad agency Carat. “It hasn’t.”

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content?

House, M.D. increased 18% with DVR ratings

For the last few years the ratings of programs on TV have been measure by Nielsen Media Research.  It becomes important to calculate these additional numbers into the mix as shows with meager or low ratings see tremendous boosts as people watch the shows on their schedule.  Not the network’s.

The biggest fears of the new recording system were embedded in the idea that people watching programs would skip through commercials and leave the networks empty handed.  Not only are shows getting a ratings boost, but recent studies have shown that they had little to worry about.

Individual shows have gained substantially. “House,” second among all shows in its live program rating (to “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC), became the top show in terms of commercials viewed within three days with a 5.68 rating (about 6.53 million), gaining almost 18 percent. NBC’s comedy “The Office” had one of the single biggest gains — 26 percent from its live program rating — to 3.92 (4.5 million) for its rating including playbacks.

The supposedly struggling NBC drama “Heroes” jumped 22 percent, as did another apparently flagging drama, “Fringe” on Fox. And a new ABC drama, the appropriately named “Flash Forward,” looks even more like a hit than it did with its original rating because its rating increased 14 percent with playbacks.

Our take is this.  You’re probably the type to sit through commercials or you don’t.  A DVR doesn’t change that.  We know people that mute the TV the instant a show comes on. We simply used that opportunity to channel surf.  With a DVR it really isn’t much different if you didn’t tune into the commercials in the first place.