The current thinking among the big, long-form content owners is that online video is a bit like the digital video recorder: It doesn’t actually take away from conventional TV viewing, but adds incrementally to it.

“When people started putting full episodes of a TV show online, people feared that we would be cannibalizing our viewership,” NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff shared this morning during the OMMA New York conference. Kliavkoff said the finding comes from research NBC Universal, Disney and other big TV studios have conducted, and the conclusion is that online video of long-form TV programs is “actually being used as a DVR.”

When viewers miss an episode of NBC’s “Heroes,” he said, they go online to watch it and catch up with the series just like they would if they had recorded it on their DVR.

Kliavkoff said the networks’ online video experience is defying the conventional wisdom that online video is a “short-form” viewing experience. He cited research indicating that 83% of people who start watching an hour-long episode online stick around until the end of it. Best of all, they’re getting to the end with all the ad messages embedded within it.

“When they sit through the full episode they retain the advertising that’s in it, because it’s sort of a half lean back, half lean forward thing,” Kliavkoff said.

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