The DVR, the digital video recorder, is one of the biggest technological advancements in TV history, allowing viewers to easily control the TV schedule.
In the ultimate bit of personal liberation, it allows us to fast-forward past those usually annoying commercials.
But are we?
The New York Times' Bill Carter cites Nielsen Media Research statistics that show 46 percent of viewers in the key 18-to-49 year-old demographic that advertisers target are watching commercials during playback. That's up a bit from last year.
From the business end of TV, that's good news.
Advertisers were worried that the DVR would render their ads useless as a way to reach viewers.
But it does demonstrate the intrinsic passivity of TV viewing. Even when we can exercise more control over what we watch, many of us don't.
If your TV-viewing arsenal includes some sort of DVR, whether it's Time Warner's version or TiVo, are you skipping through the ads and enjoying the programming more? Or are you sitting back and letting it all just wash over you? A final Favre stat: As long as we're talking about The New York Times' Carter, he looked at Sunday's national Nielsen numbers and showed that the Brett Favre's return to Lambeau pulled in a bigger audience for Fox than prime-time coverage of the World Series game, which also aired on Fox.
The Packers' defeat at the hands of Favre's Vikings averaged 29.8 million viewers, while the Yankees' win over the Phillies averaged 22.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen overnights.
And the portion of the game that ran after 6 p.m. central time brought in a playoff-level 39 million viewers for Fox
On TV: ABC's "V" remake, which launches tonight at 7 on Channel 12 and Fox's "Wanda Sykes Show," which starts at 10:35 p.m. Saturday on Channel 6, mark the final two broadcast network premieres of the fall season.
- Oxygen has picked up a second season of "Dance Your Ass Off."
- Michael Ausiello reports Adrian Pasdar has been dumped from NBC's "Heroes."
- Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is joining "Law & Order Criminal Intent."
- ABC says it will air five remaining episodes of "Shark Tank," but there's no word when.
- NBC's "30 Rock" premiered on German TV over the weekend, and pulled in a 0.0 rating. That means fewer than 5,000 households were tuned in. Perhaps a David Hasselhoff guest spot could help.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
