'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
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Do You Skip Commercials on Your DVR?
by Jean Bentley, posted Dec 22nd 2010 11:30AM
To fast forward or not to fast forward? That's the question faced by DVR users about eight times an hour -- every time yet another commercial break rolls around. Do you watch as if you didn't have the power to move time forward (woah, it sounds really serious when you put it like that), or do you zoom through those suckers on 3x speed?Back in the Tivo heyday, one of the main selling points of the service was the power to pause live TV. The lesser-advertised benefit was the fact that an hourlong show took just 42 minutes to watch when you skipped through the commercials -- though it's understandable why they wouldn't be too vocal about that fact, since the networks (and their advertisers) would likely get cranky.
According to a report in The New York Times, Nielsen ratings for commercials in primetime shows actually go up by 44 percent when DVR playback within three days is taken into account. "Some people still say, 'Nobody watches commercials.' That's not true," said Patricia McDonough, senior vice president of planning, policy and analysis at Nielsen.
But it's not all good news. In the 40 percent of American homes with DVRs, the DVR users are usually doing other things during their TV-watching time. "They're also the ones most likely to be media multitasking -- texting, Facebooking, etc., during the commercials, using that as 'down time' to do other things until the commercial is over," said Don Seaman, director of communications analysis for the media agency MPG.
"Are we saying that they're too lazy to pick up the remote to fast-forward? Far from it," he continued. "They're probably likely using commercials as a timing device to know when to pay attention to the TV again."
I'm a huge fan of fast-forwarding myself -- subtract the inane contestant interviews and I can speed through an episode of 'Jeopardy!' in 15 minutes -- but even I occasionally put the remote down and use commercial breaks to do other things. I'll get up and wash some dishes, straighten something out, get a glass of water. And, to be honest, I'm usually on my laptop while watching TV and sometimes just not paying enough attention to notice that a commercial is on.
| Always, I hate the ads | |
|---|---|
| Usually, unless I'm multi-tasking | |
| Never, I watch shows straight through |
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