01 Aug TV on Your Time: How Americans have changed the TV industry

The way Americans watch television has changed drastically through recent years. Although many watch television, they do it on their own time. Through recent research from chief research officer for CBS, David Poltrack, a new era of television has risen. “This is a golden era of television content, and the public is embracing television and engaging with television in a way that they never did before, because it is so much good programming,” said Poltrack.
Television has reached a new plateau of viewership through the ability to live stream any content via laptop, smartphone, or tablet, whenever it is convenient for the consumer in the chaos of a busy schedule.
Americans are taking advantage of DVR and streaming services instead of watching their favorite TV show air live. With the change in how viewers get to their TV there are still reported ratings the day after it first airs. This is a process which uses the live-plus-same-say metric. The system measures the number of viewers that watched the show when it played live plus the number of viewers that watched their show on a DVR player but during the course of the same day.
Calculating television in such a way does not include when people watch the show on a different day. “If you were a sports reporter, you wouldn’t report the winner based on the third inning score,” said Poltrack, “ and that’s what you’re doing right now if you’re reporting on just live-plus-same-day ratings.” Americans have been given the opportunity to customize their television watching habits to their daily routine, and that’s the way they like it.