DirecTV Works with Nielsen on DVR Data

[Gregg Lengling]

Nielsen Media Research said Thursday that DirecTV agreed to join a panel of 10,000 TiVo homes it's measuring to gauge the impact of time shifting on viewing behavior.

DirecTV customers with TiVo service can choose to "opt-in" to the panel and be included as part of the sample. Scott Brown, senior vice president of strategic relations, marketing and technology for Nielsen Media Research, said with DirecTV aboard the company will strengthen its ability to provide detailed and reliable viewing information from within the TiVo panel.

DirecTV also is excited about working with Nielsen. "Our more than 1 million DVR customers are passionate about their DVR service and participating in the Nielsen panel will help us better understand how viewers use DVRs so DirecTV can provide even more compelling services and robust features in the future," said Eric Shanks, senior vice president, advanced services and content at DirecTV.

[borghe]

To be honest, I am all for this and have never opted out of data collection on my Tivo.. hehe.. I won't vote for a presidential candidate because our choices stink, but I completely believe in "voting" for my favorite TV shows with ratings. The more viewers you can get into those ratings figures the more accurate those ratings will be.

I forgot what show it was, but it was the most Tivo'ed show of the week, like every week for quite a few months, and it placed relatively low in the Nielsen's.. now what does that tell us.. that DVRs are slowly making Nielsen's old way of ratings worthless.