Digital Home Thoughts: TiVo Effect May Not Exist

"The study shows that 95 percent of people still watch television live, though that number seems far too high. It also showed that people would skip commercials without the TiVo, by either changing the channel or doing something else around the house. Mela and his team set out to quantify the effect of DVRs, but were surprised when they came up with nothing. "We tried a vast array of methodological approaches to find a DVR effect," says Mela. "We just couldn’t."

I'd always suspected the real effect was minimal if it even existed. I thought it was presumptuous to assume that if you didn't skip the commercial, that you were watching it. I usually don't skip commercials, simply because it is a good time to step out of the room. How about you?