By Gary Levin, USA Today
Viewers with DVRs are catching up with series in record numbers, brightening the picture for TV networks by easing yearly declines.
In new Nielsen data for the season's premiere week, many shows scored substantial gains from viewing delayed one to seven days after they aired.
The lift, bigger than ever, blunts early fears several top returning series had plummeted. Grey's Anatomy added 3 million viewers, climbing 17% from its initial total, and two others - CBS' The Mentalist and Fox's House - added nearly as many. In all, 36 shows added 1 million or more viewers, and ratings for 14 programs shot up 20% or more.
And it shows how DVRs - now in one in three homes, up from 27% last fall - not only shift viewing but also increase it; owners watch far more TV than those without. Yet because viewers can skip commercials, networks can't charge advertisers for many of those extra viewers. (Ad buyers do pay for commercial viewing up to three days later.)
Popular programs in competitive time slots continue to be the most heavily recorded. Grey's, CSI, The Office and Fringe, all airing at 9 ET/PT Thursday, are among the biggest gainers. ABC's FlashForward was the most heavily recorded new-series premiere, adding 2 million late viewers (16%); NCIS: LA gained 1.8 million (10%).On a percentage basis, Fox's low-rated sci-fi Dollhouse was top gainer. It added 37%, which translated to just 914,000 extra viewers. Fringe, up 34%, was next, followed by four CW series up 30% or more. NBC's Heroes got a 27% lift but still ranked below last year's opener.
Shari Anne Brill, analyst at ad firm Carat USA, says delayed viewing also spiked because, in contrast to last fall's strike-hobbled start, "there are a lot more new shows bumping up against each other in competitive time periods," and more of them won recorded tryouts from viewers.
The data "doesn't radically change perceptions" about borderline series, says Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman. But "on a night when there's so much good programming, you want to see if you're the second choice or the third choice. It helps us to feel comfortable that if we're patient, we can start to see growth" from same-day viewing.
News and sports programming continues to rank among the least-recorded. So were weak new series such as Fox's Brothers and CW's already-canceled The Beautiful Life. And while NBC touted its new Jay Leno Show as "TiVo-proof," the flip side is that the show gained less than 5% in its second week from delayed viewing.
