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Nielsen First DVR Ratings Breakout

After a two-day delay, Nielsen Media Research issued its first ratings report that included breakouts for shows for Monday, Dec. 26 that were recorded and watched with a digital video recorder. As expected, the differences between the so-called "live" viewing (that took place as shows aired) and the additional viewing that occurred the same day via the DVR were minimal, because Nielsen currently has only 60 DVR homes in its national panel of 9,000 homes.

Those 60 households are far from representative of the estimated 8-9 million homes in the U.S. that have DVRs today. Nielsen says it hopes to have a representative and projectable sample of DVR homes in its ratings panel by July.

Fox's prime time show "House" had the largest number of DVR viewers -- 30 out of a total of 5,791,000 viewers, according to the Nielsen data. That was enough to bump the show's audience ages 18-49 by one-tenth of a rating point from a 2.2 live rating to a 2.3 live-plus same day rating. Over the course of a season a tenth of a rating point can mean millions of dollars in advertising for a show, depending on its audience size and rate card.

Most of the DVR watchers of House appeared to be women because the show's female 18-49 rating moved from a 2.7 live rating to a 2.8 for live plus same-day DVR watching. Viewing among men 18-49 remained the same at a 1.7 rating, according to both sets of Nielsen data.

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