Tivo: Every Picture Tells a Story (Don't it?)

Is Comcast on its Way to Owning Tivo?

Tivo didn’t have a great quarter, losing $.18/share. I don’t need to wait around to listen to the earnings call to hear the spin they put on this. Tivo keeps bleeding subscribers – they lost another 145,000 for the quarter. While it’s no surprise that they continued to bleed subscribers from DirectTV, they even lost 19,000 net of their own non DirectTV subscribers (last quarter they added 1000 in that category).

The good news is they apparently got 41,000 “Tivo Owned” subs added for the quarter, but unfortunately they lost 60,000 at the same time.

Separately there was this filing indicating Tivo needed additional investment from Comcast for the plans to get Tivo software on Comcast’s DVRs. It seems to be taking forever. Meanwhile Tivo's bleeding and Comcast is probably not miserable over that.

I don't want to hear the yadda, yadda over the magnificent $299 HD DVR. Though cheaper than the Series 3 it's still a product for gadget geeks (which means I will actually probably buy one). The new model has two things going against it. Even at $299, it's $299 more expensive than Comcast (or other cable providers). You can rent the Comcast box with a program guide for cheaper than you can purchase Tivo's program guide.

Is Tivo's DVR better than the cable supplied DVR? In almost every way it is. But it's not $299 better. Not for most people. The one way it isn't better is this: the DVR uses CableCard technology replacing the need for a set top box. However, the current CableCard technology does not allow for using interactive features such as On Demand. Once you've used On Demand, you're not likely to want to give it up.

Not Optimistic for Tivo

Disclosure: I’m a long, long time Tivo user. I do not hold any shares of TIVO (long or short). I don’t use Tivo much these days but am considering the $299 TiVo HD product.

The primary reason I am not optimistic is this chart:

Click to enlarge

The drop off since late ’05 is primarily due to DirectTV dumping Tivo. That plus Tivo hasn’t been able to sell many boxes on their own. In the most recent reported quarter (new data will be available in about 1 week) Tivo’s net new “Tivo owned” subscribers was a measly 1000. It’s pitiful. The new boxes might help with HD lovers, but Tivo already has boxes (non HD) that are cheaper.

The current business model just seems doomed. You have to buy a box AND buy the program guide, and most cable companies will rent you a box with a program guide for cheaper than Tivo will sell you the program guide. The hardware may be inferior, but it’s FREE.

Om Malik’s NewTeeVee had a post about how one out of five homes now have DVRs, but mostly they are not Tivo, and in the comments section, I learned that Tivo’s prospects might not be all that bad. I wasn’t previously aware that a judge had awarded an $88 million judgment to Tivo in a case against Echostar. Echostar is appealing and oral arguments in the appeal are set for 10/4/07.

Still, when your business’ best revenue source is apparently based on lawsuits or the licensing of intellectual property that will likely come from other companies if Echostar loses its appeal, it’s just not that interesting of a business.

I can’t believe the Tivo technology (at least the software) and brand won’t survive somehow, but I don’t see it happening as a stand-alone business. Someone has to buy them. The current market cap is ~$600 million. That’s practically a rounding error for the likes of GOOG.

8 or 9 years with a DVR

Mike Bloxham over at MediaPost.com wrote a very thought-provoking piece: DVR Divide?

I don't know whether I agree with all the numbers he cites or not, but it doesn't matter because either way there is a divide and adoption hasn't been swift. I believe adoption will accelerate over the next 5 years and that the cable & satellite companies will be heavily promoting DVRs. However, there will be a divide and I might be wrong when it comes to adoption.

I can’t remember exactly when I got my first Tivo, I was one of the first 100,000 subscribers. I found out about it because I had some meeting while I worked at Schwab with Stewart Alsop and if I remember correctly the VC he was working for had backed Tivo. Alsop’s sales pitch sold me immediately – a completely digital VCR and also the ability to pause live TV. I had to have one. Whether that was this time in 1998 or 1999, it has been a good long while now.

I still have that series 1 Tivo. It’s collecting dust. I probably ought to have some type of contest to give it away ( it comes with a lifetime program guide!). Whether 20% or 33% of homes have a DVR doesn’t matter. The adoption curve has not been steep.

The people who love their DVRs make a significant difference on the viewership of many shows according to Nielsen (with as many as 8 million viewers coming from DVR viewership for some shows). Mike’s point was regardless of the numbers there is a difference of behavior between DVR users and those who watch everything live, and that behavioral difference must be understood.

Here, I disagree. Even though it is true that every single DVR viewer will eventually watch some commercials, they will not watch most of the commercials most of the time. If that EVER changes, no matter what kind of behavioral studies are done, I for one will be shocked.

For the Love of Orb (and Slingbox, Too!)

This is a very long piece on media liberation otherwise known as easy media portability. This is more rough (and mostly completely unedited) thinking on these topics. What's covered: some of the barriers in general, a brief Orb vs. Slingbox comparison, more 'put your TV on your iPod', and some "Fear of Apple".

There are some Slingbox lovers out there. Some Orb lovers too. There aren't enough of us though. In both cases I think the barrier is currently too steep to reach mass adopter status and not just because either of the products are particularly hard to use, or represent unsolvable technological challenges, but instead because of how people think about stuff and the barriers involved with changing behavior.

The barriers are so hard. For instance, at least the last time I checked, most of the HDTVs hadn't wound up actually hooked up to any type of a set top box (STB) that could provide an HD signal. So you're talking about something were even when someone probably paid more than $1000, the people who bought it didn't wind up ordering the thing from their cable or satellite provider that would actually utilize fully what they just paid for. We can be very strange people.

This challenge may make you scratch your head. It might make you think "nah", but look it up. I think the cable and satellite companies have both stepped up in marketing their HD offerings, so this is changing now. But as of last year, MOST HDTVs were not hooked up to any HD content.

Most "Microsoft Media Center PCs" don't even likely wind up ever getting used as a Media Center PC. Many people buy laptops and desktops without even knowing (or knowing and not caring) that it's a Media Center PC. The first Media Center machine I bought was accidental. I had no idea it was a media center PC until I'd unboxed it and saw it had a TV tuner card built in. Since I had cable already in that room for Internet access, I split the cable and checked it out. I liked it. Then I started experimenting with ORB, and I liked it even more. But I do still have some geeky instincts (I thought I'd lost it for a while), and I like playing around with media portability and figuring out how to get it to work. Most people don't operate like that and never will.

This is even more complex than the traditional challenge of marketing something. Traditional models would be more like AOL and Quicken coming bundled on the Computer. Usually most people ignore most of this stuff too, however, AOL and Quicken can do something that doesn't make any sense for Microsoft to do with the Media Center PCs. AOL and Quicken can send you a post card (or a new shiny CD in the case of AOL) and this marketing makes sense, because if you act on it, these guys know what happens: they get paid.

Microsoft would have gotten more attention if they charged $9.95 a month to actually make the media center usable as a DVR. If it would have charged for the program Guide like TIVO does, way more people would've heard about it because if that would have happened, MSFT would have spent some money on sending people who bought Media Center PCs a postcard. On the other hand, I'm glad they didn't, because having a couple of lifetime program guides with Tivo, I would have probably not tried the Media Center's DVR out.. Similarly, I'm glad that ORB didn't ever charge me a fee.

On the other hand these are the exact same reasons that nobody has really heard of ORB or the Microsoft Media Center. I don't know how important it is for Microsoft to be perceived at the forefront of this or whether it should be important to Microsoft. I conclude that for ORB, its decision is it would rather wait for the right time than burn tens of millions of dollars in marketing as Slingbox must do.

ORB vs. Slingbox

Media Liberation is the concept that if I somehow paid for media already and can store it for my own personal use legally, I ought to be able to have access to it wherever I am.

I have gotten questions from more than one person on why I love ORB so much more than Slingbox. If you already have a TIVO and your goal is to be able to watch live or recorded tv from some remote location, I love Slingbox as much as I love ORB. You want to watch on a laptop, even some phones (sadly, not the iPhone) or any computer connected to the Internet (again, sadly no iPhones), I don't have a problem with Slingbox, though if you want it to work on your Sony PSP, you're better off going with Sony's Location Free Player or whatever they have decided to call this product these days (it's basically a Slingbox made by Sony).

There are two reasons I personally prefer ORB to Slingbox. One, it allows me to fully conceptualize in every way the notion of a media server. Secondly, while Slingbox and its ilk will give me easy remote access to live or recorded tv, I have much more than that in my digital media library. All my songs, pretty much any picture I've ever taken and decided to keep since 1997, live and recorded television, and movies and other DVD-style compliations.

Slingbox only lets me get at a piece of that, but I'd say on an application specific basis, especially if you are already set up with a DVR and all that you want to do is get remote access to live and recorded TV. Slingbox is the not only the path of least resistance, unless you already have a TV tuner card and a version of Microsoft Windows that supports Media Center, Slingbox is cheaper.

As it happened, I did already have a Media Center PC, so I played around with it. While I don't love (or hate) the Media Center interface, I do find the version in Vista an improvement, but in terms of remote access, I do love ORB, because unlike Slingbox, it puts the concept in my head of "put all the stuff I paid for here" and get it whenever/wherever I want. I am very enamored with this concept, and in the end whether content is all physically in one place or whether it's virtually distributed, as long as I can ultimately get to it all easily through one interface, I'll be satisfied. For me, ORB is the thing that most enables the "future vision". But there are yet more barriers than "what's ORB's business model going to be exactly?" I honestly don't know currently and "hope Yahoo lightening strikes twice and Orb.Com becomes the Broadcast.Com of the 2000s!" But there are bigger barriers with the consumers than Orb's business model.

Nobody Really Cares Yet, Including Apple

But for now, while WiFi isn't really free and ubiquitous...how much should Apple care yet?

In theory, the widescreen iPhone (and ultimately stand alone iPod) will be the most popular portable media device ever. But it doesn't easily support streaming presently, I will not be shocked if Apple's implementation of Macromedia's FLASH player for the iPhone still blocks me from streaming live TV. Fortunately for Apple, I was already braced because of Sony. Sony, whose PSP did ultimately get around to supporting FLASH, still managed to block streaming protocols. I can stream to my PSP, but only via additional hardware: Sony's location Free Player, or by a convoluted process where I use the PSP to connect with my Playstation 3 at home, and then use the Playstation 3's web browser to access ORB.

While I realize there is some interest in this, especially among enthusiasts and early adopters, for most people the last paragraph just causes their eyes to roll into the back of their heads. We're clearly still in the early adopter stage with some of this stuff and as a result, interoperability is a big issue that causes too much complexity and costs too much. This is a big barrier.

Ubiquitous access to more or less fast Internet. With the iPhone as it is, if Wifi isn't an option, neither is streaming. While ORB can detect your network speed and size the file appropriately, even if the iPhone currently supported streaming seamlessly, I believe because the Edge network is so slow, the results would be poor. However, I'll be shocked if the next generation of iPhone doesn't come with access to AT&T's faster network and on that network, you could get watchable video on a regular basis.

One barrier aside from interoperability and cost is that none of the installed base of the most popular portable media player currently available (iPhone/iPod) can stream anything. So my vision of all this is still at least a couple of generations more of iPods. And you can be sure the very next generation will include a widescreen/touch screen model. Whether that generation has WiFi is the $64,000 question.

The sooner it does, the sooner my vision will start to take root, and that vision is:

Put Your TV on your iPhone/iPod

Or portable media player of your choice. The one big mistake I think Apple made with the video iPod was not loading the iPods with some video content so that people could get accustomed to the notion of portable video. I did some experiments with loading up iPods and loaning them to people. Anyone I could get to use it, seemed to like it quite a bit. But not everyone was interested in trying it out. But the people who did like it and there were several, wished it was easy to get stuff off their DVRs and onto their iPods and iPhones.

For most people, it's way too hard. I have to be honest, it's often way too hard from me, and I confess on occasion I have downloaded files off the internet. I rationalize the ethics like this: the process of getting it from my DVR to my portable device is lousy. So lousy that it's easier and faster to download it. I can't buy a service to do this. I can't get it from Comcast, Apple*, Tivo, Microsoft or anybody. Maybe Facebook will offer it for $8.95 a month and then I can stand in the "I love Facebook" line like everyone else around here.

*You can subscribe to certain TV shows via iTunes and download them already in iPod format. However, these files are optimized for your TV and will playback in DVD quality should you happen to have an AppleTV, they are not optimized for the small screen and small hard drive and they aren't optimized for cramming as much video content that looks great as you possibly can. Ultimately, this will be resolved either via bigger and bigger flash drives to the point where it wouldn't matter to most people, or Apple and others will figure out how to let the software automatically optimize the content

some stuff you can do with the Zune (though I think it might be through a 3^rd party and not Microsoft) is set up to easily transfer shows you have recorded to the Zune. But the Zune as it exists presently is dead, totally killed off by the iPhone and future generations of iPods. If Microsoft doesn't get it yet, they will soon. Form factor matters and an iPhone fits in any pocket you have way better than a Zune. While Sony is taking its sweet time with the Playstation Portable 2, it's at least making the PSP 1 thinner.

I made an offhand comment to a friend that I thought the iPhone form factor wins, even ultimately for gaming, but I'm not so sure. While I don't get much increased value watching video on the PSP's bigger screen (it's at least a 3^rd bigger than the iPhone's), I haven't played Tiger Woods Golf on the smaller screen. Whether they can get the PSP more iPhone-esque in stature, I don't know but Sony is definitely on to slimming the device, and Microsoft will get there with Zune.

Fear of Apple: Who Will be its Main Competition?

I'm fearful that Apple is locking me in to an all Apple world. It's not a conspiracy, and I don't think I am being paranoid. Apple figured out how to design and manufacture really good portable media players. Now they baked in the phone and the Web browser and the integration is very cool. And because I have to have a phone anyway, and loved and heavily used an iPod already, and love reading stuff on the Web, the integration works out very cool, but that it winds up being such a great "portable DVD" replacement for me personally is more than just icing on the cake.

Apple isn't exactly notorious for being an open platform, and with the iPhone I am already forced into using iTunes for syncing, they probably will ultimately lock me in because as my library is increasingly in iTunes, if Apple can give me a DVR that can then iTunes can figure out how to optimize it for the iPhone and transfer it and charge me for it, that would currently be my path of least resistance.

I conceptually hate the notion of being locked into Apple's products, but as long as its products are actually better my hatred will remain merely conceptual.

Because of "Facebook lovin'", I saw the story where Facebook had acquired a company called Parakey which is run by the people who created the Firefox web browser software and is something called a Web Operating System (WebOS, I think is the correct Jargon). I am too far out of the technology loop to fully grasp what this means, but I think what it means is that someone could manufacture a device with a small video screen (say 3.5") and some flash storage and wifi and have it boot up to a web browser that can also serve as a file access interface (so you can store and then access files on the device for playback). If you threw in a cool touch screen interface and could sell it for around ~$300-$349 and theoretically make some money, I think there's an opportunity – to become the anti-Apple, and build this device to support anything and everything. All file formats, and whatever streams. Make it so the device doesn't care whether you have an Orb or a Slingbox, then market it like crazy to people with Slingbox, ORB, PSP, etc.

Sure, theoretically Apple could just open up to all of that too, though I can't imagine Apple feels like it needs to worry about it right now one way or the other. I think the next generation of AppleTV will give a pretty good signal of what Apple is in a hurry to deal with. If it doesn't change much over the previous model other than some of the specs and it doesn't add-in DVR capabilities of any kind, Apple isn't in a big hurry. I think it may still actually be too early for Apple to care. But I expect the next generation of widescreen iPods will be a big hit, and hopefully that will spur the movement.

I believe the bigger touch screen is the huge leap for the iPod and for the top of the line model, I do not expect the form factor or overall design will change from that version forward very much. They'll have to suck you into the new models with "more flash storage" and "faster WiFi" and "seamless Apple TV integration".

For the average person, the best answer is probably to just wait until Comcast and Apple, Tivo, Orb and who knows, Facebook and Pownce are offering you easier ways to deal with your portable media. By the time you're seeing more than one offer to take your money in return for making your life simpler, the hardware options will all be very much better than they are today and it should be reasonably easy to put your TV on your iPod.

Whether that's all 5, 10 or more years away, I don't know. Hoping that it's 5…

Still Stinging Over Betamax (Why Sony Still Can’t Help But Suck Sometimes)

There’s a fabulous gadget called the Playstation Portable (PSP). It’s a great product, especially for one that’s already at least a couple of years old with no hardware updates. The thing plays games, it hooks up to the internet via wifi (where you can play games with other people or surf the web), you can watch video on it and you can play games head to head vs. other people who have a PSP. It’s a cool gadget.

Streaming video to this gadget over the internet is problematic though, in fact, until very recently the only way to do this was by purchasing one of Sony’s Location Free players (which I did). I don’t love the Location Free Player but my primary issue with that is that most of my “media” is managed via 2 Microsoft Media Center PC’s which the Location Free Player will not integrate with. Fortunately I had a couple of old tivo series 2 lying around that it worked just fine with and I could more or less access my media center through tivo’s networking remotely just fine. Kind of klunky but it worked.

There’s also a fabulous free software service from Orb Networks called Orb. Orb is effectively a software solution to do what things like Slingbox and Location Free Player do.

With the Orb software installed on your media center PC you have complete access to all your media files (video, pictures, music, and even RSS feeds) remotely. You can access with a laptop, a cell phone, any device that can stream video from the Internet and watch remotely. You can even watch live TV remotely though given buffering, you will be shifted by at least a few seconds,

My dream that the ORB would work with the PSP has come true. Kind of. Sony has a good web browser built into the PSP, but accessing the ORB that way works – I can see all my stuff just fine. I can even look at pictures, but video streaming does not work. Sony recently launched an upgraded version of “Remote Play” allowing me to assign a PSP to my PS3 (that’s right, the $600 game console). Because I actually have one of these I can do the following:

- Use my PSP remotely to access my PS3 over the internet.
- Bring up the browser from my PS3 remotely on the Internet.
- Connect to the ORB from my PS3’s web browser (remotely via the PSP)
- Voila! Streaming video to the PSP.

But I already had the $199 version of the PSP (It’s down to around $169 I believe) that comes with a fine Web browser. Sony doesn’t want you to use it for streaming though – not at least without buying one of their other products.

For those of you who thought this was going to be some Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, discussion, sorry to disappoint you. I love high definition, but I have to be honest, it just doesn’t matter to me in terms of DVDs, not yet anyway. Although I have a Blu-ray on my PS3, I never got around to buying a single Blue-ray DVD so I never got around to buying the HD-DVD upgrade for the XBOX 360 because I just don’t care that much about high definition DVDs.

Sony is plain boneheaded here. You want to encourage people to get addicted to streaming – you don’t want to create barriers that make it harder. Needing to buy a $600 add-on (the PS3) to get it to work…that seems like a barrier. Additionally, sad to say, “Remote Play” isn’t anywhere near a stable environment. The ORB itself is far more stable.

The only place the streaming really works right now is in my home because I’m constantly having to restart the remote play on the PS3 (you can’t do this via remote play, you need to physically use the PS3) to get it to work. If I were actually operating remotely, without access to my PS3, odds of it working even once are about 1 in 3, odds of it working a second time are asymptotically approaching zero.

I’m sure Sony can and will improve this but the better improvement would be allowing the PSP to work with ORB directly without needing the PS3 involved.

Total into Sony: $600 for the PS/3
$200 for Location Free
$200 for the PSP

When I look at it that way, I just expect the freaking streaming experience to be pleasant. It isn’t. Thanks, Sony!

I think Sony develops great products usually. I like their stuff and would feel comfortable shelling out the extra for a Sony sub notebook because they are so good with products. But when it comes to integration, they make a lot of dopey business decisions and always have.

The Internet is My DVR

I first coined this phrase around a month or two ago. I was having a conversation with someone who had bought an AppleTV and while it struck me that he ascribed a lot of things to the AppleTV that were not actually because of the AppleTV, we had similar thinking.

What the AppleTV is, is a media extender. It’s a media extender specifically designed to work with ITunes and that’s what it is. Period. Through a lot of back and forth discussion on this finally I thought despite the discussion, we were really in the exact same place. The thing we wanted was for the Internet itself to be our DVR.

But either people, including billionaires are stealing the phrase I coined or, you know, it just makes so much sense that of course that’s what everyone wants and anyone who thinks about it for even a second will conclude, “Yeah, I do want the Internet to be my DVR.”

For all practical purposes, the Internet is already my DVR, oh I have Tivos and Media Centers and all that recording stuff constantly, but the Internet is mostly my DVR already. It works in a couple of ways:


1. If my goal is to get recorded content into my iPod, it’s faster for me to download a torrent of the program from the internet in MP4 format than it is to take the exact same program off my Tivo or Media Center, convert it to MP4 and then put it on my iPod. Plus, the Internet version is already stripped of commercials
2. Through these sites I do see programs of interest sorting based on # of downloads. For example, I saw that the Larry King episode with the cast of Heroes on it was a top download…and that was something I wanted to watch.

Larry King is against my religion not because he throws softballs to celebrities, but because he’s a fraud. Going back 25 years when he was on the radio he used to tell all these stories about growing up in Brooklyn. One involved a tale with Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodger Hall-of-Famer, Sandy Koufax. When asked about this story years letter in an article in the Washington Post Magazine (that comes with the Sunday paper) Koufax denied EVER knowing Larry King. I love Sandy Koufax, and I loved the Larry King story about him (it was a bet about Carvel ice cream and how much you could get 2 scoops for in the 50s), but when the story proved to be a fraud, Larry was on the outs with me. I have a rule and the rule is if I know you’re totally on-board with being a fraud, I don’t want to get any of my information disseminated from you.

However, I love Heroes and loved this episode of Larry King on CNN. I was glad to find it, download it AND watch it. I wouldn’t have if the Internet wasn’t already my DVR.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: Aren’t torrents illegal? That is not a question for me to opine on. The question I will opine on is this: do I have a right to use media I have already paid for, for my personal use in any fashion I choose FOR MY PERSONAL use?

Answer: Duh!

Do I worry about the Feds knocking on my door? I hope they knock on my door. I’ll hand them the harddrives and make a name for myself by taking down a completely stupid premise. I mean jailing me for wanting to use media I paid for in any way I choose would be ANTI capitalistic.

Why? Well, for one, I’m already into Comcast to the tune of about $2400 a year for the media, and this doesn’t include ppv, DVD’s purchased or rented, the hundreds of dollars a year I spend on Videogames, the $22/mo. I pay to Blockbuster to be able to rent videogames, the subscription costs for Tivo, etc.

Excluding hardware, my media spend for my personal consumption is probably $5000 a year. I think this makes me an exemplary citizen in the capitalistic system that values people buying media.

If you add in the hardware costs (iPods, media centers, tivos, -- and hey, let’s not forget the plasma screen and the big ass tv and the XBOX 360, and the PS3 and the Wii, etc).

My annual media spend is HUGE. Now, if someone wants to throw me in jail because I found it easier to just download Heroes off the Internet rather than convert the version of it on my Media Center PC…I say let them. I mean if the system wants to put me in jail and take the thousands of dollars a year I spend on media off the table just to make a very self-destructive example, I’m fine with it. It’s exactly the self-destructive kind of behavior (cutting off your nose to spite your face) I love to make an example of and I’d figure out how to use that jail time to make a mockery of these dopes.

Every show is NOT fed into the Internet download population, among them 2 of my favorite shows – the shows I watch the most. ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption”. Fortunately in the case of PTI, they at least have the audio as a Podcast as is Mr.Tony’s radio show back in Washington, DC. But the video for these shows does not flow into the download library in the way that shows like “The Daily Show” do.

I have a DVR to always have these shows, but there is no easy and quick way to just dump them to my iPod yet – and services that ultimately have the digital equivalent of ON DEMAND for everything, in any format, will be what we pay for. Would I go another $100 a month to Comcast for this service? NO. But another $10-$20? Yep! Believe me when Comcast thinks there are enough people like me to make that interesting, they will.

I’m certainly ahead of the curve and probably by several years on the “I want my media wherever and however I want it” that results in “The Internet is My DVR.”

I basically have already achieved this through media centers, tivos, Sony Location Free Players, the ability to remote broadcast crap of my PS3 to my PSP (location free player does this too) but I have achieved it through great expense and hardware hacks, and it’s still rather clunky as hell Though I do note that recently my ORB server ran uninterrupted with fairly high usage (by me) for over 10 days straight. I know, I know, you can’t believe I didn’t have to reboot my Windows machine for over a week. But it’s true!

The Internet IS my DVR. Someday it will be yours too. And when that happens it will be both CHEAPER (by a LOT) and BETTER (by more than just a little) than what I have today.

DVRs Save Thursday Nights

According to this story from the Hollywood Reporter, ABC had success with Thursday nights for the first time since the Barney Miller days (well over 20 years) by switching Grey's Anatomy to Thursday nights. Because I'm long winded and have not yet refined my writing skills yet let me tell you the most important thing right now: CBS says that HALF of its viewership for the CSI that runs Thurdays vs. Grey's Anantomy is people watching on DVRs. HALF. HALF. That seems...shocking and outrageous...but cool as hell if it's true.

While I did sort of taste the Grey's kool-aide, I did so primarily because it became socially impossible to have a decent conversation with any woman over the age of 33 because there were simply too many Grey's references that I wasn't aware of.

To me, this show has roughly about the same appeal as an Internet chat room or Craig's List. Right in front of you, characters who are way more screwed up and depressing than anything you have going on in your own life. But Grey's notches this up because unlike most flakes in an Internet chat room the people actually have good jobs and are beautiful and ARE STILL MISERABLE AS HELL. This is a show about a bunch of people who have great lives but are chronically miserable as hell.

Anyway, the interesting thing about this story to me was the quote from CBS Research Chief, David Poltrack. Because although CSI on CBS did feel the pain of Grey's moving to Thursdays, it wasn't problematic according to Poltrack.

"In a non-DVR world, this would have been a tough situation for the viewer and for CBS in particular because 'Grey's' comes in there and people have to make a decision whether they're going to watch 'CSI' or 'Grey's,"' Poltrack said. "But with DVRs, people were able to watch both." Half the "CSI" viewership comes in playback mode, according to the CBS data.

Idol Screws Tivo Users

...and users of any DVR. The finale for Wednesday night's American Idol finale ran over by 9 minutes (ending at 10:09p, instead of 10:00p). People who recorded Idol on their Tivo or whatever DVR they used missed out on seeing who won -- which was kind of the whole point of that last show, apparently.



I think that's unfortunate for Idol fans who Tivo'd the show, but I don't see this as a big deal really as idol, unlike most other prime-time programming is shot live, at least on the east coast. Still, Idol is not like a sporting event, say baseball that usually lasts around 3 hours, it's a show that usually ends exactly at 10p, even though it's live. With sporting events I know to go in and tell Tivo to record an extra hour. For things that can be off because of my clock, I compensate by starting recordings 5 minutes early and ending them 5 minutes later, but this wouldn't have compensated for the 9 minutes.

I still don't think this is any big deal though, because, c'mon, it's American Idol, who cares besides the 30 million lemmings who tuned in? The bigger deal to me with this is if I did care, as a west coaster, I would have to have had an information embargo before watching the show. Because before the show even aired in California, the winner was all over MyYahoo, Google News etc anyway. I think Fox out to figure out a way to sell the east coast feed to west coast viewers at a PPV rate.

Frothy west coast Idol fans would surely pay $5 to watch the feed 3 hours earlier. And quite frankly, anyone who is willing to do that should be made to pay...but that's just a personal opinion.