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TiVo Viewers Only Get 15 Of Their '60 Minutes'

By Brian Montopoli

April 10, 2006 / 2:57 PM EDT / CBS News

(AP)

If you, like me, watch many of your programs via a TiVo or other Digital Video Recorder (DVR) device, you've been continually stymied in your efforts to catch "60 Minutes." Yesterday, for example, coverage of the Masters golf tournament went until about 7:45 here in New York, which meant that I only got to watch about a quarter of the program before it cut off. "60 Minutes," in fact, might be the most TiVo unfriendly program on the network schedule, because it often follows live sporting events, which don't have set end times. During football season, for example, it's a virtual guarantee that the show won't start at its scheduled time, which means TiVo users are often out of luck.

TiVo is not yet a widespread phenomenon – the company had about 4.4 million subscriptions as of January 31, 2006 – but the use of TiVo and other DVRs is growing. (TiVo's subscriber base grew 45% during the past year.) The boxes record shows based on the schedule provided by the networks, not what's actually on television, which means your TiVo has no idea it's giving you the end of an event like a press conference or sporting event instead of what you want.

One solution for the networks, if they want to provide one, could be to schedule extra time to compensate for an event that might run long. The problem with that is that it risks leaving the network with the potential for a bunch of dead time between the end of the event and the start of the next show. Most viewers who've been watching a sporting event, for example, only have so much patience for analysis, interviews and highlights before they see what else is on and the network loses a sizable portion of its audience. Another possible solution is for the networks to enforce time constraints whenever possible. That's what happened when President Bush gave an April 2005 press conference in prime time that the networks reluctantly agreed to air. Shortly before 9:00 pm, Bush said, "I don't want to cut into any of those TV shows that are getting ready to air, for the sake of the economy." He was too late, by the way: NBC and CBS had already cut away from the press conference.

But it's a lot harder to cut away from the closing seconds of a football game, which, in addition to raising questions about our national priorities, means the start time of shows like "60 Minutes" varies from week to week. The ratings for "60 Minutes" have been good this season – often thanks in part to the sports lead in, it should be noted – but one has to wonder how much of an impact the variable start time will have, especially as DVRs become more widespread. (Interestingly, media buyers are refusing to include DVR audiences when looking at how much they will pay for ads, presumably because DVR users tend to fast forward through commercials.)

There is one simple trick available to the DVR user: Just record the program scheduled to follow the program you want to watch when it's following a live event. Alas, that doesn't work in my case, since my TiVo can only record one channel at a time, and the 8 pm slot on Sundays is reserved for "The Simpsons" on Fox. I'm lucky enough to have access to the shows I need to see because of my job, but I imagine I wasn't the only person to try to watch "60" on my TiVo last night, only to realize, with a Homer Simpson-like "D'oh!," that most of the program wasn't there.