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Women Control the DVR
JeiFuRi writes "While men normally hog the remote, a new study commissioned by Lifetime suggests that women are more likely to be in charge of their DVRs . Results from a survey of 1000 married woman say that 48 percent made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own and 55 percent claimed they understood the system more than their husband. Three-quarters of the women surveyed said that the reason they fell in love with DVR is that they are extremely intuitive and much easier than a VCR." The study also found some interesting things about DVR users' ad-watching habits.
This doesn't surprise me at all.
My wife and I have had cable for the last 6 years. I noticed and interesting difference in viewing patterns between us. I found that I tend to watch channels but she watches programs. I'll turn on the TV and watch news, documentary or sports channels and I'm not too fussy, I'll surf between the 4 documentary channels until I find something interesting and watch it. Her viewing decisions are made from looking at the program guide, the clock, recommendations from her friends and womens magazines and then decide what and when to watch. She will actually plan to watch a particular program (amazing I know). I don't think I've done that in years. A PVR would only improve her viewing convenience but it would make no difference all to mine.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that women would then control the PVR.
I doubt men are that repelled by advertisements...
I'd think men want anything that has sex in them, and are generally receptive to scenes that promote tribal behavior, if pop-culture is any indication.
Hence the popularity of memes originating in beer commercials.
I'd like to think people in general are receptive to clever amusement, advertising included; although that is a bit less substantiated, people do share such advertisements as interesting memes in spite of their corporate message.
E.g.: I'm currently not looking for a backup solution, but If I ever do, a company that hires John Cleese is more likely to get my money.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Suppose a man and a woman have the exact same knowledge of a DVR. Ask the woman if she "understands" it, and she'll take it to mean if she can use it the way it's intended to be used.
The man is more likely (IMHO) to interpret "understand" as knowing how the machine works: filesystems, video codecs, operating systems, I/O, etc etc. People are less likely to know that.
It was a steep learning curve, but within a few weeks I was recording shows like a big dog. Eventually, my recording tapered off to a low level after the novelty wore off.
However, once she realized the power of the PVR, my wife really got into the thing. Within a couple of months, she became a wizard at navigating and scheduling programs. Now she schedules at least 80% of the shows.
Meanwhile, I'm getting a taste of life as a sysadmin. Now if that box ever goes down, the disk runs out of space, or the MythTV backend gets hosed, it's got to be fixed ASAP. Sure she could revert to the old VCR, but all of a sudden, using it has become archaic and inconvenient.
I used to boast about how many hours of video we'd be able to crunch to MPEG4 and store on DVDs; now I'm stuck proving that statement by saving out every hour of figure skating competition that happens anywhere on the planet.
Oh well, at least I'm appreciated as the provider of this cornucopia of video clips.
forgive me, some will think this is "sexist" but deep down you all know its true:
You make it sound as if you're about to say something controversial when you're really just repeating conventional wisdom and pop psychologists. I do happen to find your attitude sexist, but it's an attitude that pervades our culture. Please don't portray hegemonic views as persecuted beliefs.
Men hunt, women gather.
I don't buy it. Your analogy doesn't even make sense. When hunting you have some target. You have to have a particular target in order to set the PVR. When browsing particular channels, on the other hand, you trust that certain memorized areas will bear fruit. Sounds like a gatherer's approach to me. [Of course this is an equally fatuous comparison. I make it only to demonstrate how easily expectations can be fulfilled, no matter their validity.]
mod me down if you disagree, but before you do, give it some thought. its not as wrong as society would like you to believe.
Since when has it ever been wrong to express such views in American society? I find it to be factually wrong and harmful to the extent that it's prescriptive, but I strongly doubt that I am in the majority here.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -Bernard Berenson
Your post says 1000 MARRIED women while the study says 1000 DVR users divided equally by sex.
This is a key point here:
a. You're surveying both men and women (which might seem obvious, but not from your post) - which is important because you're trying to claim to compare men and women habits - right? You can't do that if you only survey women.
b. You're surveying a specific slice of people: those who bought DVRs - this already profiles the people you're surverying: certain income range, certain education, affiliation with technology, and so on...
What's my point? Your post suggests that you can deduce on women vs men in general (see 'hunter-gatherer' post above...) - which is wrong: the target slice in society your "studying" is a specific group with very specific characteristics, and I don't think you can project from it on the whole group. The conclusions the survey makes can only be safely applied to DVR owners.
What your post suggests is quite different than the origianl article.
Dan
"Three-quarters of the women surveyed said that the reason they fell in love with DVR is that they are extremely intuitive and much easier than a VCR.""
Think about it. Women (And many Americans, male and female), back in the day of the VCR, couldn't figure out how to set the clock. (P.S. I wonder if this is why most DVD's players don't have a clock. Sure you don't need a clock on a DVD player
If given a TV properly hooked up to a VCR, and the remote for the VCR, and nothing else, you should be able to SET THE CLOCK within five minutes. If you can't, you should be shot.
And we are giving these people MORE technology? I think there is a strong argument that people don't deserve to get the new tech toys if you can't understand simple things like setting the clock on the vcr.
I remember back in the day when I used to watch a lot of the Annenburg-CPB Channel (Sue me. I can't get enough of The Mechanical Universe and its simple HS level calculus applied to physics AND Mireille in "French in Action."),
They used to advertise a show and the clip they showed was interesting and I always got a kick out of it:
A bunch of college grads (All disciplines), at graduation, were handed a simple light bulb, ONE wire, and a battery, and asked to light up the bulb (basically create a very basic circuit).
All but one showed couldn't do it. They even said it was impossible. After we saw one guy figure it out, they'd cut to a professor asking (paraphrasing),
"If college educated graduates don't even understand the basics of electricity, what does that say about a society that tremendously relies on electricity?"
I am even suggesting that most people should be allowed near a computer, until they get a good understanding of it (hardware and software). That, however, would have the impact of putting Best Buy's rip off techies, "The Geek Squad," out of business.
Currently it's about 15-19 minutes per hour.
It's easier to think of it in terms of fractions, a little over a third of all TV programming is commercials.
30 minute shows usually end up being 20-22 minutes long, 1 hour shows usually end up being 40-44 minutes long.
I only watch "real" TV for one show a week at a time, maximum, now. BitTorrent rules (don't even have to remember to hit record, I can get shows as far back as the 1970s!).
Do they WANT to get ditched by their husband?
No, they just need to feel better about their crappy lives by seeing others in a worse position.
You bring up a really interesting point about this being a Lifetime survey.
Media in general is consumed and purchased disproportionately by women. Games are the exception, but women are catching up there too, although they tend to like non-combative games more.
I freelance in media, mostly film, but some television. I've done some work for the Viacom empire, and I can tell you that programming for most television is preferentially geared to reflect that heterosexual women and gay men tend to overconsume television programming (viacom is actually preparing a channel devoted to gays). It's no surprise that women have a greater grasp of PVRs, since they are doing all the watching.
Interestingly enough, Japanese men have this unholy obsession with little girls, really young, like 12-15. Schoolgirls. Psychologists thought that this was some kind of mass pedophilia movement, but after some research, it turns out to be something else. Japanese men are overworked, 80-90 hour weeks. They do not consume much media on average in a country where 4 hours each day are devoted to watching TV. So, what happens is that these men are culturally behind the times... they actually have no idea what's going on in their own country, in their own civilization. The working man has become the butt of a collective joke... they all wear the same suits, have no style or sense of individuality. They've effectively been emasculated by their women peers. The men respond by reacting to the women who still respond to their masculinity, namely by using their money to influence underage girls. Ironically enough, it's all because working Japanese men don't consume enough media and are hopelessly "out of touch."
This is completely unrelated, but history, literature, and allegory all convey this same story. The man who swears his allegiance to a woman is emasculated for the world. Samson and Delilah, etc. Bill Gates, not the same since getting married. Paul Allen? Still hardcore. *shrugs*
Average guy gets girlfriend and infrequent head, loses utter control over his PVR and becomes intimately acquainted with "Desperate Housewives" storylines. *shrugs*
un burrito me trampeó.