• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 12, 2005

New evidence is mounting that digital video recorders may not have nearly as severe an impact on television audience patterns that many had feared. Studies released in the past couple of weeks by Nielsen Media research, the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and Magna Global, suggest both the rollout of DVRs and their impact on TV ratings may be less disruptive than earlier projections. Nonetheless, the new findings are still based on projections, which themselves are based on assumptions of various penetration and usage scenarios.

That was evident from a massive research paper Nielsen released to clients just prior to the Labor Day Weekend. The paper, which was developed to help advertisers, agencies and TV outlets, prepare for January 2006, when Nielsen begin incorporating homes with DVRs into its national people meter sample.

To date, Nielsen has omitted homes with DVRs from its sample, classifying them as "technically difficult," because its previous generation of TV meters could not measure them. With the rollout of Nielsen's new "A/P" meters, Nielsen has begun adding DVR households back into the sample.

The national rollout will begin in January when Nielsen plans to begin adding between 180 and 200 DVR households each month to its national sample for the first six months of the year. For the remaining six months of 2006, Nielsen will add 125 DVR households each month.

Nielsen has not said at what level it would cap DVR penetration in its sample, mainly because it does not actually know what the DVR universe actually is. In its white paper, Nielsen estimates DVR penetration could be anywhere from 8 percent to 12 percent of U.S. TV households. By 2007, Nielsen's projection has a range of between 12 percent and 24 percent.

While early DVR subscribers are known to have markedly different viewing patterns than the average TV viewers - watching much higher levels of pay TV services, for example - Nielsen said it would also add a corresponding number of "replacement" DVR households to its sample that should help balance out those patterns.

Overall, Nielsen's plan should actually be a net gain for overall TV viewing, as DVR households watch more TV than non-DVR homes. However, there should be some notable shifts for some TV outlets, particularly lower-rated ones, including cable TV networks. Ratings for pay TV services, early morning network news shows are expected to rise, while ratings for some cable music video channels are expected to drop considerably, according to Nielsen projections for July 2006 contained in the report.

Nonetheless, Nielsen said the overall impact of adding DVRs into the sample, would have less of an impact than other normal changes including regular shifts in its sample, or actual changes in viewing behavior.

"In short, the results suggest that the likely effect on viewing in 2006 will be small," concludes the report. "The effect on live plus seven day viewing is unlikely to be greater than the normal differences we might expect to see due to sampling variation. For live viewing, we would expect to see a small but systematic reduction in viewing as DVR penetration increases and more time shifting occurs. This too will have a relatively small effect on overall viewing levels in the short term."