• by Wayne Friedman , October 12, 2007

While we wait for Nielsen to offer up DVR playback data on the new TV season, TiVo, the digital video recording and service company, has come out with its own time-shifted viewing data for the season.

The winners, in the first week, don't look much different from Nielsen TV shows' ratings. Number one was ABC's "Grey's Anatomy." Of TiVo's 4.2 million customers, "Anatomy" was seen live by 7.4% of TiVo users, with 19.9% time-shifting the show. Overall, it reached a 27.3% number.

CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" was number two, with 6.4% of TiVo users seeing it live, 13.7% viewing on a time-shifted basis, and 20.0% overall. Next was ABC's "Desperate Housewives," at a 19.7% overall number. CBS' "Survivor: China" was next at 15.5%, followed by NBC's "Heroes" at 15.1%.

The top-rated also appeared on TiVo's Top 10 "season pass" list--users that set their DVR controls to record an entire season of shows. Other top-ratings programs were the usual TV rating suspects: ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" earned an overall 14.4% number; Fox's "House" pulled in a 14.0%. Two NBC shows, somewhat surprisingly, also landed double-digit numbers: NBC's "The Office" at 14.2%, and "ER" at 11.2%. New shows have a different sort of formula for viewers--most still want to see those programs live. ABC's "Private Practice" was seen 5.6% live; with 4.2% time-shifted; NBC's "Bionic Woman" grabbed a 4.3% live rating, with 3.8% time-shifted; and ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money" earned a 4.7% live rating, with a 2.0% time-shifted rating.

TiVo notes that on average, two-thirds of its users continue to time-shift shows--albeit not sports programming. NBC's "Sunday Night Football" had the highest live ratings, with 8.4%. Only 0.7% of TiVo users time-shifted the football program.