Tuesday’s American Idol has a Time-Shifted Audience of 3.7 Million
Tuesday’s American Idol had the largest time-shifted (DVR viewed) audience at 3.695 million of any primetime broadcast network show for the week of March 10-16, 2008. Idol was followed by Lost with 3.245 million time-shifted viewers. Rounding out the top 10 for was Wednesday’s American Idol, Survivor: Micronesia, Medium, Jericho, Sunday’s Big Brother , Wednesday’s Big Brother , Celebrity Apprentice and Law & Order.
NBC had the most shows (5) out of the top 20 in absolute time-shifted audience size.
It’s interesting how quickly new shows take hold and find a DVR audience. The ”season’s pass” features work well, and viewers of new shows like New Amsterdam can find a sizeable DVR audience quickly. While New Amterdam lost almost five million total viewers from its premiere the previous week (following American Idol) it only lost about 200K DVR viewers from the premiere episode.
Many new shows we don’t talk about very much (quite frankly, because they’re not ratings juggernauts) perform very steadily in DVR viewing. Shows like Eli Stone and Lipstick Jungle have loyal followings of well over a million DVR viewers.
The CW, which I don’t ever remember placing a single show in the absolute DVR viewing list (many CW shows are on the top time-shifted shows by % increase list) placed two shows for the week ending March 16 — both Smallville and America’s Next Top Model made the list.
At number 6, this was Jericho’s highest showing on this list to date, but that’s a bit misleading as this wasn’t Jericho’s most DVR’d episode of the season so far – Jericho had more DVR viewers for its premiere episode on 2/12 (1.5 million).
We’re now splitting our broadcast TV show time-shifting posts, if you’re looking for the most time-shifted shows by percentage increase, go here.
Top 20 Largest Time-shifted Audience Broadcast TV Shows:
| Rank | Show | Net | Viewers Live+7 (000) | Viewers Live (000) | Viewers Live+SD | DVR Audience (000s) | % Increase Over Live | %SD Viewing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AMERICAN IDOL-TUESDAY | FOX | 31,164 | 27,469 | 29,884 | 3,695 | 13.50% | 65.36% |
| 2 | LOST | ABC | 13,844 | 10,599 | 12,083 | 3,245 | 30.60% | 45.73% |
| 3 | AMERICAN IDOL-WEDNESDAY | FOX | 28,114 | 25,038 | 27,127 | 3,076 | 12.30% | 67.91% |
| 4 | SURVIVOR: MICRONESIA | CBS | 14,018 | 11,558 | 13,218 | 2,460 | 21.30% | 67.48% |
| 5 | MEDIUM | NBC | 10,447 | 8,934 | 9,340 | 1,513 | 16.90% | 26.83% |
| 6 | JERICHO | CBS | 6,732 | 5,421 | 5,835 | 1,311 | 24.20% | 31.58% |
| 7 | BIG BROTHER 9-SUN | CBS | 6,618 | 5,326 | 6,283 | 1,292 | 24.30% | 74.07% |
| 8 | BIG BROTHER 9-WED | CBS | 5,754 | 4,495 | 5,310 | 1,259 | 28.00% | 64.73% |
| 9 | APPRENTICE 7 | NBC | 8,793 | 7,541 | 8,242 | 1,252 | 16.60% | 55.99% |
| 10 | LAW AND ORDER | NBC | 12,687 | 11,448 | 11,849 | 1,239 | 10.80% | 32.36% |
| 11 | BIG BROTHER 9-TUE | CBS | 6,390 | 5,155 | 5,873 | 1,235 | 24.00% | 58.14% |
| 12 | LIPSTICK JUNGLE | NBC | 6,261 | 5,040 | 5,374 | 1,221 | 24.20% | 27.35% |
| 13 | NEW AMSTERDAM | FOX | 9,390 | 8,236 | 8,827 | 1,154 | 14.00% | 51.21% |
| 14 | ELI STONE | ABC | 7,738 | 6,601 | 6,918 | 1,137 | 17.20% | 27.88% |
| 15 | BIGGEST LOSER 5 | NBC | 8,075 | 7,054 | 7,663 | 1,021 | 14.50% | 59.65% |
| 16 | SMALLVILLE | CW | 4,398 | 3,425 | 3,805 | 973 | 28.40% | 39.05% |
| 17 | MEN IN TREES | ABC | 6,293 | 5,383 | 5,669 | 910 | 16.90% | 31.43% |
| 18 | MOMENT OF TRUTH | FOX | 10,988 | 10,089 | 10,577 | 899 | 8.90% | 54.28% |
| 19 | OCTOBER ROAD | ABC | 5,223 | 4,338 | 4,895 | 885 | 20.40% | 62.94% |
| 20 | AMERICAS TOP MODEL-4 | CW | 4,056 | 3,224 | 3,651 | 832 | 25.81% | 51.32% |
The Largest Time-shifting Audience table ranks which of the Top 150 broadcast shows [by Live+7 viewers] had the largest absolute number of time-shifted viewers on their digital video recorders (DVRs). %SD of Total = percentage of a show’s total DVR viewing that happened the same day up to 3am the morning after the show aired.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
