Jay Leno loses audience to DVR

NEW YORK (AP) — Much of the primetime audience lost to NBC when talk show host Jay Leno (photo) moved into primetime has gone not to its rivals but the Digital Video Recorder (DVR).

Rival network executives seemed almost giddy at the possibilities last spring after NBC announced Leno would do a comedy show five nights a week at 10 p.m. There will be more viewers available “for people who put on great dramas,” said Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, “and that’s what we do.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

NBC’s audience at that hour is down sharply, as many predicted. CBS is up six percent over last season, primarily because it moved the hit series The Mentalist into that slot; on three of the five nights, its audience is down. ABC is also down slightly at that hour, and it wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with hits last year, either.

With one-third of American TV households now equipped with DVRs like TiVo, the 10 p.m. hour is emerging as a popular time for people to catch up on what they missed earlier in the evening, or earlier in the week.

 “The DVR phenomenon is a little bit higher than we thought,” said David Poltrack, CBS’ chief research executive.

For example, many people watch CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Thursdays at 9, tape ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy at the same time, then watch the medical soap an hour later, he said. They may tape The Mentalist (Thursday at 10) for later viewing. One casualty of growing DVR usage is that Friday nights, home of Medium and Ugly Betty, are becoming a TV wasteland because so many people are catching up on programs they missed during the week.