DVR Owners Still Watch Commercials?

As a very satisfied owner of a TiVO/DirecTV DVR, I'm having a hard time believing this NY Times report:

People with digital video recorders like TiVo never watch commercials, right?

Add that to the list of urban — and suburban — myths.

It turns out that a lot of people with digital video recorders are not fast-forwarding and time-shifting as much as advertisers feared. According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.

One big reason is that many people with DVRs still tune in to watch about half of their shows at the scheduled start time, meaning they must sit through commercials.

And even when people watch recorded shows later, many are not fast-forwarding through the ads. On average, Nielsen found, DVR owners watch 40 percent of commercials that they could skip over — perhaps because they like ads, don’t mind them or simply can’t be bothered.

If you own a DVR and you still watch commercials most of the time, you're an embarrassment to your fellow DVR owners. I might see a few ads during news broadcasts or occasionally when I'm watching a NASCAR prerace show (as I am now), but there isn't a network show or sporting event broadcast that I will watch live. I record everything specifically so I can skip the commercials. I've actually worn the numbers off my remote control.

With 35 hours of available recording time, I rarely run out of prerecorded shows that I can watch anytime I want to. It's the only way to go.