“The FCC should proceed cautiously in evaluating the need for regulation,” said Whiting.  “Consumers increasingly choose to view their favorite shows from many different sources and incorporate media in their lives in many new ways.  Content owners need flexibility to adapt to these changes and meet consumer demand across all platforms.”

Whiting appeared as part of a panel about online video distribution considerations at a FCC forum in Chicago regarding the proposed merger of NBC Universal and Comcast.  While taking no position on the proposed merger, Whiting briefed the commission on the evolving media landscape by sharing Nielsen’s data on video consumption by the American public in an effort to give it a better understanding of the current and future market for video content.

“Over the last four years, we have seen the continuing increase in the integration of media platforms for the distribution and consumption of video.  Consumers want and expect to get video when they want it, where they want it and are willing to use whatever devices works best for them,” concluded Whiting.

Download Susan Whiting’s complete prepared remarks to the FCC.

Read Nielsen’s most recent Three Screen report.

The NHL is hoping old acquaintances will provide an unforgettable New Year’s Day in its second annual Winter Classic. The Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks – two of the original six hockey teams – will drop the puck outdoors at historic Wrigley Field- home to baseball’s Chicago Cubs.

Last year’s inaugural outdoor game provided a memorable tableaux, with Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby carving through the Buffalo snow to score the winning goal in an overtime shootout in front of the NHL’s largest regular season television audience since Wayne Gretzky’s retirement in 1999.

If the NHL hopes to top last year’s Winter Classic, it certainly has the conditions in its favor. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last year in a series that was the leagues highest-rated in five years. This season, the Red Wings average a 3.5 local household rating in Detroit (aka “Hockeytown, USA”) - third among all NHL clubs.

The Blackhawks, meanwhile, are more than doubling their average audience in Chicago over last season with an average 1.2 household rating and 43,000 household viewers.  They’re also leading the league in attendance, thanks in part to their nine-game winning streak riding into Wrigley. And with the forecast calling for a 30% chance of snow in the Windy City Thursday, the scene may well be as visually pleasing as last year’s Classic.

The programming window for the NHL’s Winter Classic is helped in part by the Bowl Championship Series’s decision within the last decade to move three bowl games off New Year’s Day. The National Championship Game, as it has since 2007, airs a full week after the first of the year, with this year’s contest between the Florida Gators and the Oklahoma Sooners kicking off January 8 on FOX.

Nevertheless, college football continues to dominate New Year’s Day television with a slate of bowl games across four networks.  Last year’s Rose Bowl on ABC was seen by over 19 million viewers, tops for any program on New Year’s Day.  The top 6 most-viewed sports programs of New Year’s Day were all bowl games, followed by the Winter Classic.

First it was the thrilling September 15th matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles on ESPN’s Monday Night Football.  The Cowboys prevailed in a 41-37 shootout watched by 18.6 million viewers, the most ever for a cable program.

Then on Sunday, the Cowboys scored another television record, defeating the New York Giants in front of 23 million viewers on NBC – the most-watched game in the network’s three year history broadcasting Sunday Night Football.  And which team played in each of the next two most highly rated SNF games this season? The Cowboys, of course.

Love them or hate them, Tony Romo, Terrell Owens, and their traveling football soap opera are delivering huge audiences for the networks this season. NBC’s SNF and ESPN’s MNF viewership are up 4.3% and 4.1 % respectively compared to the same time period last year, thanks in part to the power of the Cowboys’ national brand.

NFL Network
Meanwhile, the NFL Network is banking on the Cowboys’ primetime appeal as Dallas takes on the Baltimore Ravens Saturday night in a game that has playoff ramifications for both teams.

With college football on the sidelines, this weekend’s game is NFLN’s first Saturday night telecast of the season. Thursday night games on the network are so far proving to be a success for the league’s cable outlet. According to Nielsen’s latest coverage estimates, the network is available in 37% of television households across the country, with Thursday night games attracting an average of 3.4 million viewers, despite stiff primetime competition on other networks. Leading the way was a mid-November tilt between AFC East rivals New England Patriots and New York Jets, which pulled in 4.4 million viewers.

Updated 12/23/08:The trend continues! The December 20 game between the Cowboys and Baltimore Raven drew 5.76 million viewers making it the highest viewership for an NFL Network game this season, and the network’s second highest all-time.

Hybrid Ads include customized ads, branded promos, vignettes, interstitials, and micro-series where sponsor messaging is combined with program or entertainment content.

Recall refers to the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, a hybrid ad’s sponsor.

A hybrid ad’s “recall score” is the percentage of television viewers who can recall, within 24 hours, the sponsor of a hybrid ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing primetime TV on broadcast and major cable networks.

Recall scores are indexed against the mean score for all new hybrid ads during the time period to calculate an ad’s “recall index.”

A recall index of 100 indicates average recall.  A recall index of 279, for example, means that a hybrid ad has proven to be about 2.8 times as memorable as the average new hybrid ad during the four-week time period.

ABC’s “Barbara Walters Special” rounded out the top three.

Overall, CBS won the night with an average audience of just over 11.3 million viewers, while ABC took second place with just over 7.4 million average viewers. FOX and NBC claimed third and fourth places with roughly 7.3 million and 5.9 million average viewers, respectively. Univision followed in fifth place with an average audience of almost 4.9 million average viewers.

CBS’s “NCIS” and “The Mentalist” rounded out the top three with approximately 18.1 and 15.9 million average viewers respectively.

Overall, ABC won the night with an average audience of almost 17.5 million viewers, while CBS took second place with just over 14.8 million average viewers. FOX and NBC claimed third and fourth places with roughly 10.5 million and 7.4 million average viewers, respectively. Univision followed in fifth place with an average audience of roughly 4.5 million average viewers.

ABC’s “20/20″ and FOX’s “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” rounded out the top five.

Overall, CBS won the night with an average audience of just over 11.1 million viewers, while ABC took second place with almost 6.1 million average viewers. FOX and NBC claimed third and fourth places with roughly 5.7 million and 4.3 million average viewers, respectively. Univision followed in fifth place with an average audience of roughly 4.2 million average viewers.

ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” was sandwiched in between the two, in second place.

Overall, CBS won the night with an average audience of just over 13.7 million viewers, while ABC took second place with almost 11.2 million average viewers. NBC and Univision claimed third and fourth places with roughly 7.7 million and 4.6 million average viewers, respectively. FOX and the CW followed in fifth and sixth places with average audiences of roughly 4.6 million and 3.8 million average viewers, respectively.

CBS’s “Criminal Minds” and “CSI: NY” rounded out the top three, with 14.3 million and 11.8 million average viewers, respectively.

Overall, CBS won the night with an average audience of just over 10.8 million viewers, while ABC took second place with almost 10.5 million average viewers. FOX and NBC claimed third and fourth places with roughly 8.4 million and 6.3 million average viewers, respectively. Univision and the CW followed in fifth and sixth places with average audiences of roughly 4.8 million and 2.8 million average viewers, respectively.