Remember a few years ago when DVR devices like TiVo were hailed as the death of commercial advertising?
At the time it made sense...if you could record a program and fast-forward through the commercials, how could those commercials have even the slightest effect?
And just when it seemed like live TV was down for the count, the networks may have landed a punch that could leave DVR devices staggering.
That's because more and more networks are doing "watch-and-tweet" promotions, where they encourage fans to watch a program and tweet with their friends about it during the shows. The catch? You have to watch the programs live in order to participate, prompting the GM of The Oxygen Network to go so far as to call these new promotions a "DVR killer."
And he would know, because the latest research shows that the promotions are working, with one their shows, Bad Girls Club, increasing their ratings by 90% with real-time chatting enabled during their broadcast. The CW Network's Life Unexpected series has also taken advantage of the growing new market, increasing their Twitter following from 400 to 8,000.
The numbers don't lie, and right now they're saying that more networks will most likely be urging us to turn on our TV's and fire up those Twitter accounts.