Nielsen Report: Moving Beyond 7 Days Of Time-Shifted Viewing

by Wayne Friedman , January 14, 2013

Man-Woman-atching-TV-A Nielsen, in a new Cross-Platform Report release, says 5% of viewing happens beyond seven days of time-shifting (up to 28 days) for the top ten shows. Much of this does occur with special interest TV shows -- like science fiction.

But looking at overall TV viewing beyond seven days for all programs, much of this viewing is negligible: Broadcast TV tallies 1.1% viewing beyond seven days; for cable TV programs this comes to 0.6% beyond seven days; and syndication is at 0.3%.

The highest viewing still occurs on a live basis. For broadcast, live viewing amounts to 87.2% of all viewing; cable is at 93.3%; and syndication is at 94.4%.

Nielsen says live-plus-same-day time-shifted viewing is at 5.5% for broadcast, 3.4% for cable, and 3.4% for syndication. Looking at viewing within seven days -- after live airings -- broadcast programs average 6.1%; cable, 2.8%; and syndication, 1.9%.

Nielsen says traditional TV viewing was up nearly 80% in the fourth quarter 2012 versus the year before period -- all this coming from live, time-shifted viewing, DVDs, and game console use. It says U.S. TV viewers spent five hours a week on a computer screen using the Internet and watching video content.

media measurement, television, time shifting

2 comments about "Nielsen Report: Moving Beyond 7 Days Of Time-Shifted Viewing ".

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Stephen Allen from Pwervation, January 15, 2013 at 4:08 p.m.
Great piece of advertising for the cable companies, but does it truly reflect reality? The service providers have pretty much monopolized sports, so there is no option to watch 'on demand' unless of course you want to try and ad hoc record the event only to have the program cut short because the game overran by 10 minutes.
Cable companies tie subscribers up in knots with complex bundles and options that force you to pay for hundreds of channels of rubbish just to get the few channels you really want to watch, and then insult you further by charging you to watch 'on demand' age old movies and soaps which ought to be for free, some of which they themselves have repeated for free dozens of times over in the past.
Maybe Nielsen should be asking viewers whether they would watch time shifted 'on demand' if they had total control over the programs, and paid per view for everything that they want to watch. I would wager the response would be significantly different to the status quo. Bring it on Netflix, Roku, Boxee, Apple TV, and Smart TV manufacturers ! - the end of cable TV as we know it is just around the corner and this report does not reflect reality.
BTW - I am not in the industry. Just a tech savvy consumer that (like all the 'never connects' out there) sees a sea change coming soon in the way consumers watch and use TVs. I will be cutting my cable service this month and watching time shifted programming for free :-).
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Edmund Singleton from Winstion Communications, January 16, 2013 at 5:03 a.m.

My new DriecTV DVR allow
me to record all three late night talk show monologue every night at 11:35p...