Early Hour of WWE Raw Has a 7.8% Increase and 360,000 DVR Viewers
For the week of May 19-25, 2008, USA’s WWE Raw took the top 2 spots for cable show time-shifting with increases of 7.8% and 6.6% over its Live audiences in its Live+7 viewing audience and absolute time-shifted audience sizes of 360,000 and 286,000. This was an atypical week without any of the big cable time-shifter’s (The Hills, Monk, Psych, South Park) airing to make the top of the list.
Top 20 Most Time-shifted (DVR viewed) Cable Shows:
| Rank | Programs | Network | Persons Live+7 (000s) | Persons Live (000s) | Time-shifted Audience (000s) | % increase from Live to Live+7 |
| 1 | WWE RAW | USA | 4,956 | 4,596 | 360 | 7.8% |
| 2 | WWE RAW | USA | 4,612 | 4,326 | 286 | 6.6% |
| 3 | NBA PLAYOFFS (SPURS/LAKERS) | TNT | 5,533 | 5,346 | 187 | 3.5% |
| 4 | NBA PLAYOFFS (SPURS/LAKERS) | TNT | 6,217 | 6,038 | 179 | 3.0% |
| 5 | NBA PLAYOFFS (SPURS/HORNETS) | TNT | 6,550 | 6,387 | 163 | 2.6% |
| 6 | NBA CONF FNLS (PISTONS/CELTICS) | ESPN | 5,435 | 5,279 | 156 | 3.0% |
| 7 | NBA PLAYOFFS (LAKERS/SPURS) | TNT | 5,744 | 5,589 | 155 | 2.8% |
| 8 | NCIS | USA | 3,558 | 3,429 | 129 | 3.8% |
| 9 | NCIS | USA | 3,026 | 2,900 | 126 | 4.3% |
| 10 | NBA CONF FNLS (PISTONS/CELTICS) | ESPN | 5,698 | 5,601 | 97 | 1.7% |
| 11 | NCIS | USA | 3,102 | 3,015 | 87 | 2.9% |
| 12 | ICARLY | NICK | 3,078 | 2,996 | 82 | 2.7% |
| 13 | LAW & ORDER:CRIM INTENT | USA | 2,782 | 2,703 | 79 | 2.9% |
| 14 | LAW & ORDER:CRIM INTENT | USA | 3,284 | 3,208 | 76 | 2.4% |
| 15 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | 3,214 | 3,138 | 76 | 2.4% |
| 16 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | 3,091 | 3,018 | 73 | 2.4% |
| 17 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | 3,704 | 3,635 | 69 | 1.9% |
| 18 | HERBIE FULLY LOADED | DSNY | 3,277 | 3,209 | 68 | 2.1% |
| 19 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | 3,139 | 3,089 | 50 | 1.6% |
| 20 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | 3,205 | 3,157 | 48 | 1.5% |
Filling out the top 10 were 6 NBA Playoff games and two episodes of NCIS.
Before the NBA Playoffs it was rare to see sporting events in the top cable time-shifted list, but with those games crowding out other shows in the cable top 40 [which is all we have to measure time-shifting for], they are increasingly top DVR viewed shows in our weekly list.
As usual, Spongebob absorbs 5 of the second 10 spots.
Our time-shifting chart ranks which of the Top 40 cable shows had the largest increase in viewing between Live audience and Live+7 audience numbers from viewers watching shows later on their digital video recorders (DVRs). We include both the absolute size of the time-shifted audience (and sort the chart by that metric), and the % increase over the Live viewing.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
“As usual, Spongebob absorbs 5 of the second 10 spots.”
Nicely done.