‘The Americans’ season 3, ‘Better Call Saul’ prove themselves to be DVR monsters

While we’ve speculated a lot over the years that certain cable series are major warriors in DVR viewing, we have not had a chance to view much in the way of real data … at least until now. The fine folks over at TVbythenumbers have started to compile some real data that show ratings after seven days of viewing, and there are some real surprises in here.

First and foremost, we have more of an idea as to why FX is renewing “The Americans” year after year despite it getting such low numbers in live+same day viewing. For the episode airing on Wednesday, April 1, it originally posted just a 0.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic that advertisers look for. After seven days of DVR viewing, the rating surged all the way up to a 0.8 rating. That is an incredible increase of 300%! There is no other scripted series out there that even comes close to this sort of growth making “The Americans” a show worth keeping on the air.

What you can draw from this mostly is that viewers of this show are passionate about it, but they often either have other commitments or they prefer watching it without commercials. They also may be a little more upscale, given that they are willing to spend money on a DVR in the first place.

Elsewhere, another notable increase goes to “Better Call Saul,” which for its March 30 episode went from a 1.1 rating all the way to a 2.7. That is almost a 150% increase. Sure, the percentage here is far lower than the FX show, but this is still huge. It’s a far better percentage than any show on network TV, and we imagine that this show is going to prove itself to have even more of an audience once it arrives on Netflix.