The CW: Where DVR-Viewing Is Very Much In Fashion
I have seen the future of TV and it looks like this: The CW.
That may seem surprising, as in most of my ramblings about the broadcast networks, I’ve mostly ignored this cute little Weblet that largely operates outside of my demographic, being the home of “Gossip Girl” and remakes of “90210″ and “Melrose Place.” It’s also easy to ignore because it only has a handful of programs and low ratings. But it still has one remarkable characteristic: it is far and away the network that has the highest number of viewers who watch its programs on a time-shifted basis via DVR.
That makes the CW a glimpse into the future — when shows may mostly exist as pieces of content that are watched when viewers want to. Appointment viewing for most programming may be a thing of the past before we know it.
With a tip of the hat again to Mediaweek, here are the percentage of viewers at each network that watched shows via DVR last week in the 18-to-34 demo.
- CW: 56 percent.
- Fox: 46 percent.
- CBS: 42 percent.
- ABC: 38 percent.
- NBC: 27 percent.
More than half of the 18-to-49 demo (52 percent), DVRs the CW’s shows. When total viewers are added in, the number drops to 43 percent — but that’s still way, way ahead of the percentage of DVR viewers we’re seeing in the main for broadcast programming, which has been coming in at around 16 to 17 percent so far this season.
Besides the raw numbers themselves, what strikes me about these percentages is how plainly clear it is that they still have a lot of growing room left. For one, DVR-ing skews younger, but as younger viewers get older, they are essentially going to move these heavy DVR percentages into older demographics. The other is that DVR penetration is only at 30 percent, according to Nielsen’s second quarter “Three Screen Report” of TV, Internet and mobile usage.
As pertains to the CW, I wonder if as early as next year it will see more than half of its total audience watch it on DVR, making it not so much a network, as we’ve come to know it, but a viewing brand that exists when and where viewers want it to.
Previous coverage of time-shifted TV viewing at BNET Media:
Catharine P. Taylor has been covering digital media and advertising for almost 15 years and is a frequent speaker at conferences about media and advertising. She posts daily to BNET Media, writes the weekly Social Media Insider column for Mediapost and also has her own advertising blog, Adverganza.com. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to the BNET Media Twitter feed.
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