DVR Numbers For Premiere Week See Smallville & Dollhouse Jump Big - October 15, 2009

Here comes some great news for fans of Smallville and Dollhouse. The ratings have not been good for Dollhouse so far this season and Smallville has been down too overall. Wait for it, that is obviously not the good news. Both shows air on Friday nights. What does that mean? A lot of people don’t watch TV on Friday nights cause they aren’t home. That means that they are setting their DVR’s and watching shows later. To back that up, here comes the first set of DVR numbers for the season. Premiere week had Smallville and Dollhouse both jump 50% in viewers when the DVR numbers were added. Those two had the highest . Comparing Dollhouse to last season, the show jumped 30% after DVR numbers which means that it grew in DVR numbers with this season’s premiere. I get so sick and tired of networks looking at live ratings numbers with shows. They are going to have to realize that the day and age of watching shows live are over. People are going to their DVR’s or going to streaming shows online to watch at their own convenience. Sure, you’re going to have shows that will do well playing live. However, let’s look at these numbers. The networks are targeting the 18-49 demographic. If you want to go even younger and hit the 18-34 demographic, The CW is a good example to look at what the younger audience is doing. DVR viewing!! Below those two shows, 90210 was next in DVR viewer gain with 40%. Melrose Place jumped up 38% while Gossip Girl jumped 36%. Other shows that saw big gains were Fringe on Fox which was up 38%. Law & Order was also up 33% on NBC which also airs….on Friday night. Heroes saw a 32% gain with its DVR viewership. Getting numbers like this just makes me laugh. I just get so tired of hearing about networks complaining about shows doing low numbers on Friday nights. Smallville was the biggest one that made me laugh when people said, hey, its ratings are down. Well, no duh. You moved it from Thursday to Friday. Did you expect it to go up? DVR numbers and online streaming are going to have to be paid attention to more cause you may have a hit on your hands and your audience is finding other ways to watch it. That target younger demographic is doing so and it shows with those CW numbers.