Stone walls do not a prison make*...

Obviously, they don't make a city either.



[via mr]

*...nor iron bars a cage.

Filthy lucre...

Really.

Also found on bills: fecal matter. A 2002 report in the Southern Medical Journal showed found pathogens — including staphylococcus — on 94% of dollar bills tested. Paper money can reportedly carry more germs than a household toilet. And bills are a hospitable environment for gross microbes: viruses and bacteria can live on most surfaces for about 48 hours, but paper money can reportedly transport a live flu virus for up to 17 days. It's enough to make you switch to credit. [More]

Also: the $ (dollar sign) is not found on the currency.

The young are different...

Being a boomer myself, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at wide differences in opinion between age groups.  But lately some pretty stark comparisons have been pointed out.

For instance, in former East Bloc (communist) countries it appears a latent "nostalgia" for the bad ol' days is creeping into the perceptions of oldsters.

As we look to the future, this final table raises interesting questions. Across the board, younger citizens are both more supportive of the transition to a market economy and to a multiparty political system. Only time will tell whether democracy and capitalism are always more favorable to the young than to the old or if this will turn out to be more of a cohort effect, with aggregate support for democracy and capitalism increasing over time people who have come of age under post-communism occupy an increasingly larger portion of the population. Of particular interest here is Russia, where a very sharp divide apparently exists between those under and over the age of 50 in terms of support for both multiparty democracy and market economies. [More]

Here in the US, a similar pattern has emerged concerning gay rights.

Traditionalists take heart that same-sex marriage has lost every time it's been on the ballot, and that a decisive majority of the public rejects it. The latest poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds 53 percent of Americans are against, with 39 percent in favor.

But anyone who denies that "American opinion is shifting" inhabits a fool's paradise, whose walls are sagging noticeably. Opposition to gay marriage is shrinking. In 1996, 65 percent took a negative view. Since then, support has fallen by about one percentage point a year. Put another way, one out of every eight Americans has gone from opposing the concept to endorsing it.

Time is on the side of gay marriage. The heaviest opposition comes from people over 65. Among those under 30, by contrast, supporters predominate—and by a hefty 58-to-37 percent margin. Ask any actuary where this disparity will lead.

The opponents of same-sex matrimony are in ever-worsening straits. Civil unions and domestic partnerships, which provide some or most of the accouterments of marriage, have been provided to gay couples in nine states and the District of Columbia, according to Lambda Legal. Once radical, these are seen today as the sensible compromise between giving gays the right to sacred matrimony and giving them a sharp stick in the eye. [More]

Somehow it's kinda comforting to think maybe we boomers won't have much lasting effect on our world.

A place for everyone...

I scratched my head when RFD-TV brought Don Imus on board, and was not surprised when the marriage broke up.  But you can't keep a good man mouth down.

I gather that Fox Biz has managed to push up its morning ratings by hiring that great financial guru Don Imus. But that sort of proves the point; Fox Business can get viewers, but only by turning itself into … Fox News. [More]

Have you spoken to the sales department?...

Mike Wilson goes boldly into dangerous waters for a farm magazine editor.  In the current issue of Farm Futures he has an excellent story about monopolies on both sides of our value chain, and then an editorial than winds up thusly:

The development of GMO seed took a basic com- modity — seed production — and turned it into a product complete with legal restrictions, even lawsuits against some farmers. Life science companies rightly began to use intellectual property rights laws to protect their inventions, changing the way farmers use those seeds. “We are at a point where a handful of corporations can decide what something is worth without really having a test of the market,” says Richard Oswald, Langdon, Mo.
As a key link in the food chain, farmers need buyers to compete for their commodities. Farmers need input sellers to compete among each other to ensure better efficiencies and more transparency in the marketplace. [More but in an awkward pdf format]

Ya see - this is the advantage of being the editor.  I can imagine the various conversations I might provoke by sending in a column questioning the business practices of the largest advertisers for farm media. 

Especially in the early moments of an increasingly bitter struggle for market share in the seed biz.

DuPont, the second-biggest seed maker, grabbed U.S. sales from Monsanto this year, showing its larger rival that farmers won’t always pay for the most advanced seeds. Monsanto aims to regain market share with corn that contains eight genetic changes and the first update of its herbicide-resistant soybeans in 13 years.
Monsanto Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is counting on the new soy and corn varieties to add $1 billion to profit by 2012. A survey of growers early in the harvest now under way indicates the seeds aren’t meeting yield expectations, contributing to an 11 percent decline in Monsanto’s shares the week the results were circulated.
“The distrust that could be building in the market is very negative for Monsanto,” Paul Baiocchi, a senior market strategist at Delta Global Advisors, which manages $1.5 billion, including Monsanto shares, said in a telephone interview from San Francisco.

The new soybeans, known as Roundup Ready 2 Yield, boosted yields 7.3 percent, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a presentation. That’s at the low end of the company’s prior forecasts for a 7 percent to 11 percent gain. [More]

There are reasons why farm magazines are pretty slim at times.  Too many pubs chasing variable streams of advertising is one. It is not a trivial exercise to wander into touchy territory such as seed/grain concentration.

On the other hand, it's going to be hard not to comment on an issue that is only going to fester into customer rage this winter IMHO.

Well done, Mike. 

I'm going to applaud from waaaay over here, though.

Mandates and the Constitution...

Among the several comments I have received about health care reform is the suggestion mandates to buy health insurance are unconstitutional.  I hadn't hear any debate about this, but I have been pretty well out of the loop (no, still not done).

My initial reaction is why health insurance would be any more unconstitutional than auto insurance, but luckily better minds than mine have pondered this question.

Before we get started down this road, yes, the individual mandate is constitutional. For a roundup of the argument, see this Tim Noah piece. For a longer, more technical explanation, see this post by law professor Erik Hall.

The summary is that you can look at the individual mandate as a tax, which is constitutional, or as a regulation forcing private actors to engage in a certain transaction, much like the minimum wage, which is also constitutional. I've also heard scholars mention auto insurance, which is an obvious analogue, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, which proved that the government can order businesses to install ramps, despite the fact that the constitution doesn't explicitly give the federal government jurisdiction over entryways. [More]

And of course, the mind wanders to the ethanol mandate...

Photo of the Day...

Haven't done this for a while.

[More]

(Guess who's rained out)

A little sugar...

Knowledge. 

From "Twenty Things You Didn't Know About Sugar"

9 The artificial sweeteners saccharin and aspartame were found accidentally when lab workers doing research that had nothing to do with sweetening put a bit of the test compounds in their mouths and liked what they tasted.
10 What kind of researcher sticks an experiment in his mouth?
11 At least he had an excuse. The scientists who discovered sucralose (now sold as Splenda) were originally trying to create an insecticide. An assistant thought he had been instructed to “taste” a compound he’d only been asked to “test.”

Science and the people...

Seem to be diverging. 

First some recent survey information.

Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009
A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change" believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement. A summary from the survey states that:
"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."[83] [More]

For a more exhaustive overview of the scientific community, I found the following helpful.

Climate change critics like Richard Lindzen try to say "There's no consensus on global warming." in the Wall Street Journal, in front of Congress, and many other places.  This argument has also been made repeatedly on Fox News.^1,2  Other researchers like Dean Dr. Mark H. Thiemens say this "has nothing to do with reality".^1,2,3   The following is a list of quotes from scientific organizations, academies, scientists, industry spokesmen, etc supporting the existence of man made climate change and the need to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Many of these quotes reference the IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is widely regarded by mainstream scientists as either the "most reliable" or one of the most reliable sources for accurate information on climate change.  As you will notice,  the evidence against the consensus critics like Lindzen and pundits on Fox News is overwhelming.  If you are confused as to whose opinion matters, just pay attention to the peer review science journals and the National Academy of Sciences.  For those that don't know, the National Academies are like the Supreme Court of science.  The number of climate scientists in the US can be found by examining the members of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).  As of November 10, 2006 we know that there is a minimum (no official count of foreign climatologists is available) of 20,000 working climatologists worldwide ^1,2.   An important fact to remember is that many high profile critics you see in the news do not qualify as climate scientists when these standards are applied.  Keep both of these concepts in mind the next time you see a handful of self proclaiming "climate scientists" with dissenting opinions.  It is also important to note that Exxon Mobil is funding a $10,000 bounty for climate denialists and skeptics.  If only 2% of the 20,000 climatologists were bought out then we'd have 400 deniers (skeptics are convinced by science not money).  If you have suggestions for the addition of other quotes please post them at our blog. [More]

[Another recent survey]

The compelling value of these sources is both the depth and breadth of the agreement, rather than self-proclaimed authenticity.  More interesting is this recent study done with economists.

The law school’s Institute for Policy Integrity sent surveys to 289 economists who had published at least one article on climate change in a top-rated economics journal in the past 15 years. Half of those economists responded anonymously to a dozen questions that solicited their opinions on a range of issues, from the impact of climate change on particular industries to how the benefits of reduced greenhouse-gas emissions should be calculated.
The survey found that 84 percent of the economists agreed that climate change “presents a clear danger” to the United States and global economies – hitting agriculture the hardest – even though the severity of global warming remains unknown.
Only 5.6 percent disagreed with that statement, while 7.6 percent were neutral and 2.8 percent had no opinion.
Not surprisingly, the economists favored a market-based approach to limiting carbon emissions, with 80.6 percent supporting the auctioning of emissions allowances, while 9 percent believed the government should give them away.

Climate change legislation before Congress would initially distribute some free allowances to industry while increasing the number of auctioned permits over time. “Some of the answers we get were fairly consistent with what we expected, to the extent that they are consistent with general economic theory, which is likely to favor an auctioning system,” said J. Scott Holladay, an economics fellow at the institute and an author of the report.

Nearly all the economists – 94.3 percent – said the United States should agree to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through an international climate treaty. Fifty-seven percent said the country should make such a commitment even without an agreement. [More]

Given this growing near-unanimity among experts - especially in the field of climatology - why is the general public sliding the other way?

 [Source]

I don't find this surprising.  Given the recession and the fact that climate change legislation  is about starting to pay for the damage we have inflicted and will inflict on the environment, there is little upside into trying to grasp the mechanics and implications of theis complex problem.  Upton Sinclair put it best:
“If is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”

 The awkward part is when skeptics try to force reason backwards.  We don't want to pay for climate change damage, so we try to undo the physics and chemistry underlying the phenomenon.  That's not going to well, so the better tactic is political resistance.

For the most part logic and reason are not too important in political debate these days.  Which is why folks feel free to hold inconsistent positions on political issues.  What is playing well is emotion, especially outrage, and more especially displaced outrage. 

Upset about the bank bailout? Deny AGW.

That'll show'em. 


The larger problem is just like the economic issues facing us, climate change is beyond the attention span of most and secondary to the immense problems facing so many every moment.


Without patience and clear voices in an arena of civil discourse, I think the most effective course of action is to prepare for significant increases in all such issues.  This does not guarantee disastrous consequences, but it sure makes them more likely.


The funny part is if those consequences come earlier than we think, rather than after we're off the stage.

 

 

Bad headlines...

This kind of stuff makes folks think wind power could be THE answer to our energy problem.

Giant New Utah Wind Farm Will Power Los Angeles

OK, doesn't that imply to you it will light up the whole dang megalopolis?  But wait, down the story you get the real output.

Featuring 97 wind turbines, the first phase of the project has the capacity to generate 203 megawatts of wind energy, enough to power about 45,000 homes per year, Gaynor says. [More]

I have written before about the constraints on wind power: intermittent production requiring backup, grid issues, and flat out minuscule output compared to coal, NG, or nuclear.  But we still love the "free" illusion.

And the subsidies.

Harvest update...

Thank goodness for a stretch of great weather and some corn reluctantly drying down to about 20% so we can bin it (nervously with air).  At the same time yields - and especially test weights - are in the toilet.  Very disappointing after some credible, but hardly outstanding early numbers.

You know the feeling: you don't want to open up the next field/number.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope your efforts are going better.  However, I flew from Las Vegas to ORD yesterday and saw NOT ONE combine going after we entered IL.

Memo to self: rethink scheduling speeches in November.

Thank God for a spouse and son who are going above and beyond in my absence.

BTW, if you would like to meet both Jan and Aaron (and offer condolences) he and I will be speaking at the TP Young Farmer Meeting in January.

Assuming we're done...

Update update:  I spoke today in LaGrange, IN and visited with some grain dealers/feed millers/farmers.  Yields seem to be pretty good, but within this week the mold problem has exploded with no place to go with badly damaged grain.  Mostly gibberella up here - but because of the mycotoxins more problematic than diplodia in my area.  Moisture is still 25-30%.

I don't think this helps...

Ongoing cognitive behavior research could only add to the wave of anthropomorphizing food animals, I suspect.  As we discover how smart pigs are, for example, we draw too many irrational conclusions about how we should relate to them.

Animal Behaviour, researchers present evidence that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings and find their food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.
To which I say, big squeal. Why should the pigs waste precious mirror time inspecting their teeth or straightening the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, when they could be using the mirror as a tool to find a far prettier sight, the pig heaven that comes in a bowl?
The finding is just one in a series of recent discoveries from the nascent study of pig cognition. Other researchers have found that pigs are brilliant at remembering where food stores are cached and how big each stash is relative to the rest. They’ve shown that Pig A can almost instantly learn to follow Pig B when the second pig shows signs of knowing where good food is stored, and that Pig B will try to deceive the pursuing pig and throw it off the trail so that Pig B can hog its food in peace.

They’ve found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus’s worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more. For better or worse, pigs are also slow to forget. “They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,” said Suzanne Held of the University of Bristol. “They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.” [More]

It seems to me eating "smart" animals is at least as confusing on some mental level as eating "cute" animals.  It's why I am growing increasingly nervous with strenuous campaigns to "educate the public".

If we tell them all the information it should include stuff like above.  If we tell them our version we look like run of the mill shills and are easily countered by stories like this. Moreover, active media confrontation only garners more exposure to such data.

Between the information explosion and the medical community trying to cope with the cost and consequences of obesity, I could see a generation long decrease in meat consumption to levels similar to other countries.  (To my surprise the US is not tops in this category, and you'll never guess who #1 and #2  are!)

Increased feed costs will simply be the coup de grace, unless we can refocus our sales to nations way down the consumption list, I think. Our meat industry is going to have to be about trade and the right product mix.

Unsustainable food marketing...

Compare and contrast the following news items.  First, the connection between obesity and minimum wage levels.

Growing consumption of increasingly less expensive food, and especially “fast food”, has been cited as a potential cause of increasing rate of obesity in the United States over the past several decades. Because the real minimum wage in the United States has declined by as much as half over 1968-2007 and because minimum wage labor is a major contributor to the cost of food away from home we hypothesized that changes in the minimum wage would be associated with changes in bodyweight over this period. To examine this, we use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 1984-2006 to test whether variation in the real minimum wage was associated with changes in body mass index (BMI). We also examine whether this association varied by gender, education and income, and used quantile regression to test whether the association varied over the BMI distribution. We also estimate the fraction of the increase in BMI since 1970 attributable to minimum wage declines. We find that a $1 decrease in the real minimum wage was associated with a 0.06 increase in BMI. This relationship was significant across gender and income groups and largest among the highest percentiles of the BMI distribution. Real minimum wage decreases can explain 10% of the change in BMI since 1970. We conclude that the declining real minimum wage rates has contributed to the increasing rate of overweight and obesity in the United States. Studies to clarify the mechanism by which minimum wages may affect obesity might help determine appropriate policy responses. [More]

Apparently, for reasons to be determined, the lack of any meaningful floor in wages shifts food consumption to less desirable health effects.  This is surprisingly close to the thrust of Food, Inc. and a serious indicator of one the problems our system currently struggles with: the increasing concentration of income growth into fewer hands.

Concern over the perilous state of the economy ran throughout the discussions during the conference.
“There are families not eating at the end of the month,” said Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, and “literally lining up at midnight” at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts.

Among the steps Wal-Mart is taking to address the changes in shopping habits, Mr. Quinn listed an overhaul of the retailer’s private-label brand, Great Value, which is promoted in commercials describing how families can fix dinners with Great Value products “for less than $2 a serving.” [More]

After visiting with dairy farmers this week, and trying to think of their marketing perspective, the failure of our economic engine to produce income gains for most Americans poses a huge marketing problem for these producers. The tiny portion of us who are seeing income growth will niot be spending more on food, but folks at the bottom would.

Redistributive schemes are ideological anathema until you try to sell a product.

An old reliable gag...

Haven't done any signage stuff for a while, so...

 

[Just a few more...]

[via drb]

Another reason to favor biscuits...

I haven't had much time to surf recently, but I had to check out this headline:

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really)

[More]

And you thought your harvest was having unexpected problems.

 

Not waiting to "get it right"....

As the health care reform debate intensified, one strain of objection has centered on the "undue" speed and sloppiness of the reform effort.  We should slow down and get it right, opponents argue.

Only we have been trying to get it right for decades and meanwhile the problems have only gotten worse.  But they are right in saying the current legislative vehicles have enormous flaws and likely will not perform as advertised. 

Yeah, right - like any government program does.

So the choice is between ugly choices or none.  I go with ugly, and so does John Cassidy.

So what does it all add up to? The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this commitment, and I think the federal government’s spending priorities should be altered to make it happen. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t.

Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established. Even a twenty-first-century Ronald Reagan will have great difficult overturning it.

That takes me back to where I began. Both in terms of the political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of making the United States a more equitable society, expanding health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars. [More]

We have used this act-first-and-figure-out-the-consequences-later practice as standard procedure for most of my adult life.  Our Iran policy springs to mind as an example. Congress - and the American polity, for that matter - have never produced brilliant legislative action as a result of careful study and reasonable debate.  Farmers ought to know that from many farm Bill experiences.

Perfection is the enemy of the possible, and I would sooner push the system to where, as in other developed countries, no American worries about getting basic health care, going broke because of a health problem, or losing health coverage when laid off.  We'll figure out how to pay for it and control costs when the economics absolutely force us to. 

This is how we do other less important programs, and how we arrange the economic crises that will allow for politically unpopular entitlement reform.

You'll catch more flies with subsidies...

Than capitalism. For those of your worried about the deficit, how about cutting back on this government boondoggle?

Arguments over the profitability of the crop insurance industry are to be expected and have occurred often. An arm of government, be it the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the RMA, releases a report that finds excess industry profits. The industry responds with arguments about the flawed accounting standards used by government analysts and then releases its own report that allows it to argue that it cannot absorb any cuts in the taxpayer subsidies that it receives because the industry is already undercompensated.

What should Congress conclude? Should members and their staff believe the industry reports that further cuts will reduce industry profits to the point at which companies will not be willing to participate in the program? Or should they believe the GAO and RMA reports that conclude that substantial cuts can be made because the industry is overcompensated?

Although economists are often maligned for their lack of ability to be precise in offering prescriptions for what ails the economy, their concepts and analytical tools can often give insights into competing arguments. An examination of how the crop insurance industry operates and competes provides a simple and reasonably accurate measure of the amount of excess profits the industry receives. This measure estimates that industry subsidies could be reduced by more than a billion dollars without adverse impacts on program effectiveness. [More]

Of course, farm subsidies are the last thing that fiscal hawks in farm country want to see cut, but oddly that's pretty much the attitude of other lobbying sectors as well.  The problem in our case is graphs like these:



It also explains why practically ag product/service I buy comes with an automatic "You want crop insurance with that?"

And while we're talking about church...

For all you Methodists.



And for anyone who has been attending long enough to identify.




[via mefi]

Ah, yes...a capella on Sunday morning...

This quick essay rang a bell.

The first time I attended my father’s church, I was mortified, standing among my siblings, to realize we would be singing hymns without accompaniment: the sole piano player had defected to another church before my father’s arrival. With barely over a dozen members in the congregation, you couldn’t get away with mouthing the words. And trying to sing loudly enough to prove you have neither a heathen’s irreverence - though you are your very own, grown-up kind of heathen, singing out of respect for your parents’ belief - nor a tin ear while trying to keep your neighbors from hearing the cracks in your voice is akin be being strangled. Or slowly drowning. The necessary ratios of open throat to closed throat, of sound release to sound blockage, are tricky. Sure, it sounds pornographic, but anyone who has reluctantly joined in on the joys of communal singing knows it’s the truth. Your heart rate accelerates equally from oxygen deprivation as congregational stage fright. All this to say, trying to maintain privacy while singing in church is difficult enough without a conspicuously absent piano and twelve good country people singing acapella. [More]

To all for whom congregational singing is not something you look forward to.

[via 3Q]

Bless our TV laziness...

I actually ask the folks at USFR not to tell me what our Nielsen ratings are unless they have to for some reason.  I think it would every bit as nerve-wracking as watching the combine monitor on a year like this (another reason Aaron is in the cab).

One of the TV's industries concerns is as DVR's become commonplace and more shows are watched after recording, many of you will skip the commercials.  

Apparently not.

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content?
The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected.
“It’s still a passive activity,” he said.
And those passive viewers are watching in numbers big enough to turn some hits (“House” on Fox) into even bigger moneymakers, some middling successes (“How I Met Your Mother” on CBS) into healthier profit centers, and some seemingly endangered shows (“Heroes” on NBC) into possible survivors.
Two years ago, in a seismic change from past practice, Nielsen started measuring television consumption by the so-called commercial-plus-three ratings, which measure viewing for the commercials in shows that are watched either live or played back on digital video recorders within three days. This replaced the use of program ratings.
At the time, network executives fiercely resisted the change, fearing that they would never get credit for recorded shows because viewers would skip through all the commercials. But the figures show otherwise.
“It’s completely counterintuitive,” said Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC. “But when the facts come in, there they are.”
Almost across the board, the gains for playback are growing. The best preseason estimate for the current season, said David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for CBS, was about a 1 percent increase from playback over the live program for the networks combined. Instead, many are in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when DVR ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.
“It’s the magnitude that’s really surprising us,” Mr. Poltrack said.

In the 18-to-49 group of viewers — the one prized by networks because most ad sales are directed there — Fox has the biggest percentage increase, from an average rating of 2.39 (which translates into about 2.5 million viewers) for its live programs to a 2.71 rating (about 3.1 million viewers) when the three-day DVR playback results are added in. [More]

Of course, it could be viewers can't read the remote without their glasses, to pick a problem completely at random.

Or the remote is not in the right hands, i.e. a girl.