Early DVR playback data for last week shows large playback increases versus the same week one year ago according to Variety:

Those programs are now all competing with primetime programming stored on DVRs. In other words, Conan O’Brien’s competition isn’t just David Letterman or “Nightline” — it’s that episode of “The Office” that aired earlier in the evening.

Those hours before and after primetime, as well as on Friday and Saturday nights, have became catch-up time for viewers. According to Poltrack, DVR use was up 46% on Friday in primetime compared to last year — which further explains why the nets barely registered on the night.

“There’s so much on Thursday night that people want to watch, so many programs, that last week a lot of that Thursday-night viewing spilled into Friday,” he said.

Poltrack suspects that some of those Friday shows were then recorded by viewers and played back on Saturday.

For Monday through Thursday last week, DVR playback during primetime hours was up around 36%, and up 34% during 11 p.m. newscasts and 27% during latenight.

More on Variety

Buried very deeply in the story is something that was front page news here on TV by the Numbers!

For all the talk that the networks experienced a strong premiere week, Wakshlag noted that the nets were still down as a whole in week one vs. last year.

Update:  Julia’s comment below made me to decide to go look at the actual press release from TiVo.  The New York Times indeed used some curious word choices both. in its headline, and in the story with regard to “hit” and “most popular”.  The actual press release as titled by TiVo was  Emmy Gold Not Necessarily a Silver Bullet for Advertisers, According to TiVo

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The New York Times has a story up on how people with TiVos mostly don’t watch commercials and even more skip commercials in hit dramas.  But I had to smile at the show they used in the graphic, especially since the story was titled “Hit TV Shows Have Most-Skipped Ads“:

The most popular television programs had the least-watched commercials, TiVo reported last week. The company said that nearly all of the television shows that won 2009 Emmys showed higher levels of ad-skipping than the averages for their respective genres. The sole exception was “30 Rock,” 64 percent of whose audience skipped the commercials, as opposed to 66 percent for all sitcoms generally.

An interesting chart showing DVR subscription trends from Magna Insights:

The estimated 50.7 million DVR households for 2014 is about 44% of the current 114.9 million US TV households.

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It might well be the most stylish series on television. But when “Mad Men” beams into the homes of some of its most devoted viewers, the picture quality might make them think they’ve had one martini too many.

The 2008 Emmy drama champ airs on AMC, but the cabler’s high-definition channel isn’t on the menu of such major providers as DirecTV and Time Warner Cable.

Not that AMC is alone in this regard. Comedy Central, Golf, Lifetime, MSNBC and Travel are among several other networks that haven’t found nationwide distribution for their HD selves.

The issue is significant for those watching on HD sets.

[...]

However, when the standard-definition broadcast is viewed on an HD set, there is murkiness, with colors not ringing true and images looking diffused.

Much more on Variety

Wha!?! No Mad Men in HD on DirecTV?  But rather than being an issue of technology limitations, it seems to be a matter of time due to legacy carriage agreements that predated the HD channels, and HD won’t likely come to those outlets until the carriage agreements come up for renewal.

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I think there are several interesting things to take away from this latest online video report from Nielsen.

1. 205 minutes (3.5 hours) of online video viewing per month, even growing at 38% a year, is a tiny fraction of the  141 hours / month of TV viewing per person in the home.

2. Hulu is the #2 video source by streams already, with nearly 2x the streams of #3 Yahoo.

3. I need to check out Blinkx. They’ve had a billboard on Hwy. 101 in San Francisco forever, but I’ve never given them much thought.

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News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch told investors on Tuesday that the company is “looking into” the possibility of adding subscription products and pay-per-view offerings to the popular online TV show site Hulu.

No final decision has been made, Murdoch said, speaking at an investor conference that was Webcast.

via MarketWatch.

I’m sure viewers would be fine if pay-per-view content was added to Hulu.com, but in the same investor conference Murdoch revealed that the WSJ would start charging for weekly access to the newspaper via their iPhone and Blackberry applications, which is currently free, so who knows exactly what Rupert is thinking about for Hulu.

Awards aren’t exactly the same thing as checks, as this has been going on a long while now, and will go on a while longer.   But here’s the latest.  TiVo won a court order that according to the judge will result in about $200 million in damages from Dish Network and EchoStar.  This has dragged out a while now, and TiVo was actually requesting $1 billion (one billion dollars!) which the Judge said was unreasonable.

Dish and EchoStar said they were pleased the judge rejected Tivo’s request to award the larger amount and that it found that any violation of the injunction was not willful.

“While we disagree that any amount of sanctions was warranted, the decision confirms our belief that we designed around Tivo’s patent in good faith. We believe that we ultimately will prevail on appeal,” the company said.

-Via WSJ

via Nielsen Wire:

Three Screen Report: Media Consumption and Multi-tasking Continue to Increase Across TV, Internet, and Mobile

Americans are increasing their overall media consumption, and media multi-tasking is part of the equation, according to new data from The Nielsen Company’s most recent Three Screen Report. During 2nd Quarter 2009, the number of people watching mobile video increased 70% from last year and people who watch video online increased their viewing by 46% compared to a year ago. In addition, the average American TV consumption remains at an all-time high (141 hours per month) compared to the same time frame last year.

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