VCR (Very Cool Revolt) : Home-Taping Habits Are Lagging Behind Original Predictions

It was supposed to have been the start of a revolution.

When the videocassette re corder became widely available in the mid-1980s, media pundits and trend watchers predicted that television would never be the same. They imagined an army of “time shifters”--viewers free from the tyranny of network scheduling who would tape their favorite shows and watch whenever they felt like it. The Nielsen ratings would be rendered worthless. Everyone would skip through the commercials. Life as we know it would be altered forever.

Fast forward to 1991, where the VCR is a household word--literally. Of the more than 93 million U.S. homes with televisions, 72.5% have a VCR--almost twice as many as five years ago. The device has permeated national consciousness to the point where President Bush, in a June commencement speech at the Caltech, joked that “the seventh goal (of education) should be that by the turn of the century, Americans must be able to get their VCRs to stop flashing ‘12:00’.” It would seem that in the VCR revolution, D-Day--make that V-Day--has arrived.

Or has it?

“What we’re finding is that there have not been huge changes,” said Paul Lindstrom, a vice president-product manager at Nielsen Media Research, of the videocassette recorder’s effect on the nation’s viewing habits. “Advertising agencies were making predictions that the VCR’s impact would be very substantial, but we have found that recording has leveled off and declined over the last few years.” Even movie rentals cut into only a small percentage of total television use, he added.

At the networks, the calm attitude of those trained to follow such trends also belies any threat of mutiny by time-shifting masses.

“Generally speaking,” said Larry Hyams, director of audience analysis at ABC, “you’re not really talking about much of an impact.”

At first glance, statistics seem to contradict such unconcern by those presumably most affected by time-shifting, the networks and advertisers. The average number of recordings American households make each month has fallen from more than 580 million during each of the first three months of 1990 to less than 500 million a month a year later--yet that’s still 3.5 million more recordings a month than four years ago.

But what’s important, Lindstrom said, is not how many shows are being taped; rather, it’s who’s doing the taping.

“In 1991 only 11% of all VCR homes are counted as heavy recorders, and they’re making more than half of all the recordings,” he said. A few people record every day, he explained; the rest don’t do it much at all.

And who are these hard-core tape-a-holics? They’re women (conventional wisdom says working women) who capture their favorite daytime dramas on a daily basis.

One such heavy user is self-proclaimed soap addict Carol Ann Barman, a fund-raiser for the USC-Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, who tapes “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns” every day. “I can’t help it, I’ve been watching these soaps ever since I was old enough to watch TV,” she said. “I work during the day, so there would be no way I could watch them if I didn’t have a VCR.”

Barman’s usual habit is to come home and watch the day’s events before she cooks dinner. Sometimes she’ll fast forward to the juicy parts--which she thinks is one of the benefits of the VCR. “The first show’s a half hour and I can watch it in 15 minutes,” she said.

Long recognized as the most cohesive group of video-tapers, there are enough daytime drama time-shifters like Barman to affect rating totals.

“For the typical show (the number of time-shifters) is very small, but for daytime serials the number begins to become meaningful,” said Arnold Becker, vice president of television research at CBS.

In February, for example, 14% of the total viewership for the most-taped soap, ABC’s “All My Children,” came from VCRs. But for the most-taped overall show during the same time period, “The CBS Sunday Night Movie,” video recordings accounted for just 7% of overall viewership.

Despite the more substantial percentage of soap opera time-shifters, advertisers haven’t rushed to take advantage of this new breed of working-woman viewer.

“One problem is that when Nielsen reports demographic information (for the soaps), they assume the same audience composition for the taping audience as for the live audience,” said Betsy Frank, senior vice president and director of television information and news media at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide in New York. “You know it’s not true, but still, even if working women are your prime target, there are better ways to reach them.” In other words, even in daytime dramas, time-shifting hasn’t made a real difference.

Most experts, including Nielsen’s Lindstrom, predict it never will.

“I think it’s important to keep in mind that the earliest people to buy VCRs are the most interested in TV and the heaviest users,” he said, explaining the geometric expansion that panicked the networks in the early years of VCRs. “Over time, the use of the VCR began to change. You keep bringing in lighter and lighter users as the machine gets less expensive.”

The other factor, said Lindstrom, is the “new toy” effect. “People tend to record a lot at first, but the average use of the VCR for taping shows declines about 40% after the first year.”

Not to mention the scores of people who are still in the dark over how to set those pesky timers. Richard Hazlewood, sales manager at the Silo electronics store in Hollywood, gets calls “all the time” from impulse buyers who have purchased a machine and can’t figure out how to work it once they get it home.

“We can spend 15 or 20 minutes on the phone,” he said, “just trying to help them turn the thing on.”

Maybe the revolution will have to wait a few more years--or at least until everyone can get their machine to stop flashing “12:00.”

VCRs Soar While Recording Declines

Households that have at least one VCR (Figures in thousands.) 1987: 47.5 1988: 51.7 1989: 58.4 1990: 63.1 1991: 67.4

Average Monthly Recordings, per household (First Quarter.) 1987: 10.3 1988: 10.7 1989: 9.0 1990: 9.2 1991: 7.3

How Do VCR Households Record? (Trend of VCR recording.) Set On Same Channel: 14% Set On Different Channel: 27% Set Off: 57%

When Do VCR Households Record? (1990 figures. Percent of minutes per day.) Time slot: Percent M-F 6-10 a.m.: 1.75% Sat/Sun 6 a.m.-1 p.m.: 3% Sat 1-8 p.m.: 3.5% Sun 1-7 p.m.: 2.9% M-Sun 1-6 a.m.: 7.2% M-Sun 11 p.m.-1 a.m.: 8.1% M-F 4:30-8 p.m.: 6.8% M-F 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.: 32.5% Prime time: M-Sat 8-11 p.m. / Sun 7-11 p.m. 33.9% Total minutes recorded during one week: 119.25 SOURCE: Nielsen Media Research

(Orange County Edition) Most-Recorded Shows

Figures from February 1991

Ranking Program Network VCR audience 1 CBS Sunday Night Movie CBS 1.4% 2 ABC Monday Night Movie ABC 1.1% 3 All in the Family 20th Annv. CBS 1.0% 4 L.A. Law NBC .9% 5 Mary Tyler Moore 20th Annv. CBS .9% 6 NBC Sunday Night Movie NBC .9% 7 Nostradamus NBC .9% 8 Very Best of Ed Sullivan CBS .9% 9 All My Children ABC .9% 10 ABC Movie Special ABC .8% 11 ABC Sunday Night Movie ABC .8% 12 Cher...at the Mirage CBS .8% 13 All My Children* ABC .8% 14 Days of Our Lives NBC .8% 15 Barbara Walters Special ABC .7% 16 CBS Tuesday Night Movie CBS .7% 17 NBC Monday Night Movie NBC .7% 18 Trials of Rosie O’Neill CBS .7% 19 General Hospital ABC .7%

* One showing during the month, which was partially preempted.