DVRs Boosting TV Viewing?

According to new research, adults in households that have digital video recorders (DVRs) actually watch less TV than adults in the general population. The findings by Mediamark Research, an audience-measurement firm, seem to conflict with major broadcast network researchers who told advertisers in November that people in households with a DVR watched 12 percent more hours of TV a day than those without. David F. Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS, said the Mediamark numbers were unreliable, because they were derived from people's often-low reports of their own TV watching. The figures suggesting that adults who use a DVR watch more television come from Arbitron's 2,000-person machine-recorded survey in the spring of 2005, but it covered only the Houston market.