Are Networks Beating Back the Devil in the DVR?
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Broadcast TV is gradually winning its fight to get paid for commercials seen as long as a week after they air, up from three days. But the victory may be of the Pyrrhic variety as long as the networks continue to lose ground in a separate, harder battle — the one being waged against the DVR.
Advocates of extended commercial ratings, the most vocal of which is CBS, believe that counting four more days of time-shifted viewing will go a long way toward reversing a steady ratings depletion, not to mention compensate networks more fairly for the audiences they deliver. CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves has even argued that replacing the current three-day standard, called C3, with a weeklong C7 isn’t enough. Why not C30 or more?
“We will get paid from people who watch our shows 22 days from now,” Mr. Moonves predicted in December. In August, he ventured that 75% of CBS’s transactions in next summer’s upfront marketplace will use the newer currency.
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