Matt Schley
October 3, 2016 
If phrases like “adults 18-49” and “Live-Plus-Three” get you excited, this is the article for you.
Television ratings within the greater Tokyo region will now include digitally recorded content, which may be a big boon for anime.
The announcement was made by Tokyo-based company Video Research, essentially Japan’s version of Nielsen, who track TV ratings by peeping into a random sample of households to see what’s on the tube.
Video Research announced that from October 3, it’s adding 900 homes in the Tokyo region, and in those homes it’ll be measuring time-shifted programming – TV that’s recorded to a DVR rather than being watched live.
Okay, but what does this have to do with anime? Well, as you may know, a ton of anime airs extremely late at night, which affords both laxer obscenity rules and cheaper time slots. It’s understood that most fans are recording shows rather than staying up to watch them, and that the broadcast is essentially serving as a teaser for the eventual home video release.
This change in Video Research’s methodology, however, has some interesting implications for late-night anime. It’ll now be possible to use ratings to get a more accurate picture of currently-airing shows’ popularity. It may also make advertising on late-night anime more attractive, though DVRs can be used to skip commercials.
Regardless of how this shakes out, Nielsen launched its own DVR tracking back in 2007, so let’s all welcome Video Research to the future.
Source: Yaraon
Related Posts
