The Impact of Time-Shift TV on TV Viewership and Ad Consumption

We partner with a large telecommunications provider to study the impact of Time-Shift Television (TSTV) on TV and advertisement consumption. TSTV automatically records the programs broadcasted on TV and makes them available to users for 7 days. We investigate the outcomes of a randomized experiment ran by our industry partner in which subscribers were gifted a new set of entertainment channels. A random subset of households were gifted these channels with TSTV. Another random subset received the channels without TSTV. This design allows us to attribute any observed differences in the behavior of these two groups to TSTV. Using difference-in-differences, we find that, on average, receiving TSTV increased daily TV time, did not reduce live TV viewership, and increased viewership concentration. Finally, we find that receiving TSTV did not impact the probability of ad exit from the pre-existing channels, suggesting that households did not use TSTV to strategically avoid advertisements.