• by August 15, 2000

In what some have dubbed yet another validation of interactive television’s existence, Nielsen Media Research and TiVo, Inc. yesterday announced the formation of a strategic agreement to enable audience measurement of personal video recorders with the TiVo(TM) Service in all metered television panels.

San Jose, CA-based TiVo – http://www.tivo.com - is the creator of the personal television service, which simplifies the way people watch television by digitally recording television shows, without videotape, so “you can watch what you want, when you want to watch it.” Today, the TiVo Service is available in the US on the Philips Personal TV Recorder and the Sony Digital Network Recorder in nearly 4500 consumer electronics retail and online outlets, and penetration levels are rising.

Scott L. Brown, Nielsen’s VP of marketing & technology, said the agreement extends Nielsen’s shared commitment with TiVo to provide critical information about how viewers use the TiVo Service and personal video recorders in general.

Brown said engineers from both companies will work closely to adapt Nielsen Media Research metering software to the TiVo environment, and once that metering solution is in place, the companies will be discussing with their customers how to develop a set of appropriate editing and crediting criteria for reporting time-shifted programming.

This is a second agreement in two months between these two firms. At the end of July, in an effort to forecast the time-shifted television viewing habits of Americans, Nielsen announced plans to recruit a cross-section of 1,500 television viewers for an independent sampling base and supply them with TiVo players, while ASI Entertainment crunched the numbers and analyzed viewing habits data.

Three years ago, the appearance of TiVo on the market sent shockwaves through the industry – service subscribers can fast forward through the commercials, so advertisers and network programmers are very uncertain about how such digital time-shifting will impact viewing habits when the technology is more widespread.

Initially considered a cool gadget, TiVo’s subscriber base has grown in the past year to 51,000 and the company has fostered partnerships with companies such as British Sky Broadcasting, Home & Garden Television, IFILM, DirecTV and Sony. TiVo has even faced some hacking problems recently as some customers have begun tinkering with the boxes to add a second hard drive, skirting an official $300 upgrade.

TiVo claims its leadership of the interactive television industry is grounded in its ability to forge critical partnerships with the giants of the media, technology, consumer electronics television and other industries.

In June, the company obtained a $200 million investment from America Online, which in turn became TiVo's largest shareholder and impressed Wall Street analysts. The deal calls for the companies to develop a co-branded set-top box to make TiVo's personal record