BC Beat: TiVo Weighs In On Best Picture Nominees

According to data from TiVo, TV ads for Oscar best picture contenders Up in the Air and Up were the most popular across all demos on both broadcasting and cable... with one caveat.

Based on viewership of the commercials, which TiVo allows folks to skip, Up in The Air was the commercial most likely to "avoid the fast-forward button" as TiVo put it. It topped that category in every demo except households with kids under five viewing ads on cable channels. In those homes the least-skipped Oscar nominee was the computer-animated Up.

Somewhat surprisingly, another computer-generated film and the top box office draw of this and perhaps any other year, Avatar, never made it past second place in any of the demos.

TiVo bases that survey on the 35,000 subs who have agreed to allow their personal info--age, income, ethnicity, and, importantly, how often they go to the movies.

The caveat is that a minimum of 20 spots were needed to qualify to be ranked, so Hurt Locker, A Serious Man and An Education did not qualify.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.