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DVR Use One Factor in Networks’ Low Ratings

If you ask several of the top programmers in network television what is going wrong with their ratings this season, they offer a litany of answers: jarring schedule disruptions from debates, election night and Hurricane Sandy, for instance, as well as the ever-increasing defections toward delayed viewing and away from the nightly schedules that have defined network prime time since the days of radio.

The numbers tell the tale. With seven days of delayed viewing factored in, ABC is down 7 percent in the audience preferred by most advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49; CBS is down 18 percent; and Fox Broadcasting is down an eye-popping 26 percent. NBC is the only network bucking the trend, with its audience up 23 percent in that category.

“We are definitely in a transition period,” said Paul Lee, president of ABC’s entertainment group, citing the heavy shift toward reliance on DVRs and video on demand to create personalized viewing schedules.

Another factor also seems to have been at work this fall: disappointing new shows.

“The point the networks make is that the DVR is revolutionizing viewing,” said Brad Adgate, director of research for Horizon Media, a media buying company. “But that is masking the fact that the new shows they put on this fall just aren’t that good. There are better shows on cable.”

The lack of excitement this fall came in stark contrast to a year ago, when a host of new series broke through as hits: “Two Broke Girls” on CBS, “New Girl” on Fox, “Once Upon a Time” on ABC and many others. ABC had an especially fruitful year, bringing back six new series for second seasons.

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ABC’s “Nashville” is a critical success struggling to find a wide audience.Credit...Chris Hollo/ABC

This season, only one new series, the NBC drama “Revolution,” has cracked the top 30 programs among those 18-to-49 viewers.

Mr. Lee noted that “there is always an ebb and flow” to seasons, with one marked by strong newcomers followed by another filled with misses, and midyear shows that often reverse the fall trend.

Kevin Reilly, chairman of entertainment for Fox, also stressed that the history of television has been marked by what he called “flat years” when the new selections largely didn’t pan out. “I think this is a flat year,” he said.

Another top network executive, Kelly Kahl, the chief scheduler for CBS, suggested that the season may be showing signs of settling down after the disruptions of the fall, citing stabilized performances for CBS’s shows in recent weeks. But he, too, stressed that networks have to recalculate the meaning of success with “people adjusting to new ways of watching television.”

He pointed to CBS’s growing success in adding viewers from DVR recording, with no fewer than eight CBS shows adding more than three million viewers after a week of delayed viewing is counted. (Only one of those, the drama “Elementary,” is a new show.)

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CBS, which broadcasts “Vegas,” is down 18 percent among the coveted group  of viewers 18 to 49 years old.Credit...Monty Brinton/CBS

A few new shows gained favorable reviews but failed to attract adoring audiences. ABC’s “Nashville,” despite strong critical backing, has struggled to build wide audiences, winning support among young women but not with older viewers — perhaps, Mr. Lee said, because older viewers “have not gotten past the barrier of country music.”

A Fox comedy, “The Mindy Project,” won critical praise, but has ratings that, in most recent years, would have doomed it in two weeks. But it at least has a core audience of young women watching, and as with “Nashville,” in this season’s environment, that has been enough for survival.

“Usually you are able to say the show was sampled and rejected,” Mr. Reilly said. “Almost none of these new shows were even sampled.”

The need to find some way to carve out space on viewers’ recording machines has been an added factor preoccupying the programmers’ minds. “There is a real pressure to make sure this is appointment television,” Mr. Lee said, “television that has a hook.”

Robert Greenblatt, the top entertainment executive at NBC, reinforced that point. “The bigger the hook the better,” he said.

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Tracy Spiridakos in NBC’s “Revolution,” the only new show with notable  success.Credit...Brownie Harris/NBC

But Mr. Lee said this approach could be contradictory. “On the one hand,” he said, “you need it to have the fierce urgency of now, so you want to watch it live. But on the other hand, you want it to be attractive enough for people to want to put it on their DVRs.”

Mr. Reilly cited another factor that has served to expose the new group of shows as a mostly uncompelling lot. “You have the addition of cable programming in the fall,” he said. “In the past, maybe one show would stick a toe in the water, but now you’ve got multiple successful cable shows coming on right in the middle of fall.”

Numerous cable entries have stolen attention from the networks’ fall season, including “Sons of Anarchy” on FX, “The Walking Dead” on AMC and “Homeland” on Showtime. Besides occupying space on DVR lists, those shows have been building audiences, often beating all the networks. Last week, even the reality show “Duck Dynasty” on A&E racked up ratings that eclipsed most networks’ 10 p.m. entries.

Networks have also lost audiences to the phenomenon known as binge viewing — watching backlogged episodes of shows in marathon sessions. This fall, the AMC series “Breaking Bad” set ratings records after collecting hordes of new viewers who binged on previous seasons through Netflix.

The network programmers agree that they need to find shows that somehow stir instant interest, as well as ways to market those shows across the different platforms viewers use. “You’re suddenly playing three-dimensional scheduling of shows,” Mr. Lee said. “You have to match it with three-dimensional marketing.”

At least three of the networks contend that they will come back next fall with shows that will compel viewers to give them a try. (CBS, with the most successful lineup on the air, mainly is standing pat with its programming.) Mr. Lee talked up a show based on the Avengers comics. Mr. Greenblatt, who at NBC is developing shows about Cleopatra, Dracula and Gilded Age New York, said, “I sound like a broken record, but you’ve got to swing for the fences.”

Mr. Reilly agreed: “A lot of people are saying this is year of the DVR — it is. But this is also the year when nobody had an exciting enough show in a season of tremendous interruption in environment; and this is the year that the critical mass of people said, ‘You better really get my attention.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: DVR Use One Factor In Networks’ Low Ratings. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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