DVR Ratings Are In, Modern Family and Fringe Get Biggest Boosts

I was always curious about how much a show's viewership increases once you factor in DVR since millions of people are watching their shows at times other than the scheduled broadcast. And why not? Why work your day around television time-slots when you can work your TV shows into your day, like Fringe Friday nights (more on that later)? Enough about the glory that is recorded TV, let's get back to these numbers.

The DVR ratings are of great interest to me because I'm curious to see if any patterns emerge (for example, it seems reality TV is less likely to be watched after the fact... for obvious reasons) and thanks to Zap2It (and their sister site TV by the Numbers) I stumbled across the year's DVR numbers and they are, although not as cool as I suspected, still quite interesting.

Modern Family proved to be the biggest gainer, a show that did quite well in the live+ same day ratings anyway. In fact, most of the top gainers, not surprisingly, were from the comfortable ten to twenty million viewers a week bracket (with Hawaii Five-0 and The Mentalist coming in at numbers 2 and 3) but they did make a point of noting that Fringe, one of my personal favorites, was the biggest winner in terms of percentage with an additional 41% coming from DVR viewers. A 41% bump in total viewers is huge, especially with a 56% raise in the coveted 18-49 demo (DVR may start extending the life of some shows, as Kelly noted back in 2009)

Here are the top ten shows in terms of DVR viewership...

Biggest DVR Gains in Total Viewers
1. "Modern Family," +3.484 million (11.196 million to 14.68 million, a 31.1% gain)
2. "Hawaii Five-0," +3.259 million (10.936 million to 14.195 million, 29.8%)
3. "The Mentalist," +3.045 million (14.536 million to 17.851 million, 20.9%)
4. "Grey's Anatomy," +2.912 million (11.267 million to 14.179 million, 25.8%)
5. "Glee," +2.681 million (10.864 million to 13.545 million, 24.7%)
6. "Criminal Minds," +2.62 million (13.642 million to 16.262 million, 19.2%)
7. "NCIS," +2.541 million (19.721 million, to 22.262 million, 12.9%)
8-tie. "Castle," +2.52 million (10.7 million to 13.22 million, 23.6%)
8-tie. "House," +2.52 million (9.954 million to 12.474 million, 25.3%)
10. "Blue Bloods," +2.465 million (11.29 million to 13.755 million, 21.8%)