USA Today publishing TiVo data

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USA Today publishing TiVo data

This is interesting and something worth watching: USA Today announced they will publish TiVo data in their Life section showing monthly data for Most Watched and Most Recorded. I bet they'll also add most paused moments (like last year's super bowl and oscars) as well.

They'll treat the whole thing like the Nielsen ratings when they show the top ten shows from 20,000 selected households using a TiVo, so privacy problems should be minimal. USA Today will carry the data right alongside the Nielsen ratings and top box office totals, but it's nice to see this data being considered as legitimate as the more established methods of viewership measurement. [thanks Rino!]

The first chunk of data on the USA Today site is last week's top 10 recorded shows, shown right alongside Nielsen's new enhanced demographics data:
24.0% American Idol (Mon)
23.7 American Idol (Tue)
21.1 American Idol (Wed)
19.5 The Apprentice
16.4 Obnoxious Wedding
15.4 Will & Grace
12.1 Scrubs
12.0 Friends
11.9 Alias
11.1 The OC

by Matt Haughey January 29, 2004 in News

Comments

I guess the only way to counter the complaints about collecting viewer data is to mainstream it so that it doesn't seem like such a bad thing...

Posted by: TiVo Owner at Jan 29, 2004 10:42:53 PM

One issue with data on what is being recorded is the numbers can be skewed a bit.

For example, if i'm recording ER... it could be because I am watching Without A Trace LIVE instead of recording it.

So Without A Trade doesn't get any kudos, because just because i'm not recording it... doesn't mean im not watching it.

I'm not sure what data is communicated to Tivo, does it communicate shows you watch also or just shows you record?

Posted by: carl at Jan 30, 2004 9:57:24 AM

If you look at the USA Today page linked in the orginal post, they do mention that most of the American Idol viewers watched it live, not TiVo'd (if I'm reading the footnotes correctly).

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 30, 2004 10:02:14 AM

I know they keep pretty decent stats. I called Tivo support one time, and they told me precisely how many times I changed certain features. So they can probably diff their stats from watched and recorded.

Posted by: Mike at Jan 30, 2004 1:22:13 PM

You know, I was really hoping that I'd see some of the more independent shows on TV. I had heard that Firefly was among the most tivo-ed shows, and so I had hopes while the link was loading that it would somehow NOT resemble the nielsons.

I was wrong.

Where's the love for something besides American Idol people?

Posted by: John at Feb 3, 2004 1:34:34 PM

Honestly John, I think TiVo has gone mainstream since it began. It was once said that Junkyard Wars was the most TiVo'd show as well. I bet during the initial geek uptake of tivo Firefly and Junkyward Wars were huge, but now that half a million normal folks have one, I'm not surprised they mirror the Nielsen ratings (I'm surprised it's not all survivor shows at the top).

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Feb 3, 2004 2:44:49 PM

USA Today publishing TiVo data

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