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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

This was pretty interesting. They estimate between 60% and 75% either watch something "same-day" or sometime soon after on a DVR.

"Anyone who watches a show on the night it airs, either live or by 3 a.m. local time the next day — Nielsen’s cutoff point for the 24-hour period — gets counted in same-day ratings. Those people, however, have steadily declined as a percentage of a show’s total audience."

I am trying to remember the last time I watched anything at home other than football or soccer on a network channel.

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I wonder what the data says about viewership dropoff after initial release.

I didn't watch Stranger Things or House of Dragon until months after they dropped. As my life becomes more busy, I'm less inclined to watch media with immediacy.

Watching Netflix cancel shows within mere weeks of them dropping is interesting. You'd think they'd have some kind of signal before launch if they're confident enough to cancel a show days after release.

Maybe they can even play fancy tax games and remove the shows from streaming like Discovery/WB/HBO has started doing. Declare a total loss.

>This was pretty interesting. They estimate between 60% and 75% either watch something "same-day" or sometime soon after on a DVR.

Even though I don't watch most shows until months or years after they first came out, on the rare occasion when I really like a show it really elevates it to watch it every week with friends 'in sync' with each other - so you can chat about it all week. The last show I liked enough to watch this way was Andor.

Netflix makes this impossible by releasing full seasons at once. There's never a time I'll be in sync.

Netflix doesn't make that impossible. If your friends feel the same you could coordinate. No need to wait a full week either. When services withhold episodes of a show I won't even start it until they're all out. I may or may not end up binge-watching, but either way, I much prefer to watch things on my own schedule. During the pandemic we even used browser extensions to sync the episodes we were watching on netflix to within seconds.

Probably worth stating the obvious that this only includes shows that originate on linear TV, though. Their estimate for linear-TV entertainment shows is that 30-40% of them watch via streaming, but when you add that to all the shows that get watched 100% via streaming (because that's the only way to get them), streaming ends up trouncing broadcast or DVR as a source of most entertainment content, to an extent I don't think I realized.

Like many people, I decided a couple of years ago, in my case, that sports weren't sufficient for me to subscribe to live TV. And, given that, I may watch a few series more or less when new episodes drop but rarely same day.

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