| JPL78 said: Also on the topic of shows being cancelled because people DVR them, another reason DVR helps shows is because it opens up schedules on certain stations more. Look at Breaking Bad, before the last season AMC started showing a few episodes every night at like 3 in the morning. Hardly prime time. Edit: in terms if people watching online I'm not sure how you are defining that exactly. People stealing everything and downloading it all illegally? Okay, I'll give you that. But you can't honestly put that in the same catagory as paying a cable provider 100 dollars a month and utilizing a DVR to allow you to watch television on your own schedule. As far as people legitimately watching television online they are either paying for episodes on services like iTunes or watching free streams on websites like NBC or Adult Swim. In either of those scenarios the provider is still benefitting. |
Well that's how it used to be in the past. People didn't have DVR's and if you missed an episode of something, it was almost impossible to get a chance to watch it until after the season was finished. If two shows were being brodcast at the same time, then you could only watch one. This used to result in TV shows getting huge ratings throughout their seasons. Now its unimaginable to expect shows to get ratings as huge as those in the past with the exception of sporting events and award shows.
Even ad revenue which includes DVR ratings is not the same as if all those viewers were watching the show live as it aired.
People streaming includes all those viewers who view episodes online. If they download it ilegally then the network and gets no money. If they view it legally through other methods like Netflix, or Hulu, the network does get money, but its no where near the same as if all those people watched the shows live.








