I’ve had a TiVo for a little over a year now.  This article from Business Week points out some interesting things that they’re learning about what ads people are watching:

Indeed, just like clickable ads, TiVo’s initial data reveal some trends that ad agencies and networks might prefer to bury. For one, a program’s rating—the number of people saying they watched a TV show at a given time—appears to have an inverse relationship with the proportion of ads viewed. On April 11, 2002, ABC’s popular TV drama The Practice drew a TiVo rating of 8.9, meaning 8.9% of TiVo owners watched the show live or recorded it and watched it later. But those viewers watched just 30% of the ads shown. Meanwhile, quiz show The Weakest Link, drew a rating of 0.9, but viewers watched 78% of the commercials. TV news magazine 60 Minutes got only a 2.2 rating, but its viewers sat through 73% of the ads.

Certain genres are “stickier” than others, TiVo’s research shows. Big-budget situation comedies and dramas tend to have the lowest retention and commercial-viewing rate because couch potatoes tend to record them and skip through the commercials rather than watch them live. Reality TV, news, and “event” programming such as the Oscars do significantly better at getting viewers to see the commercials. Just 39% of viewers watched ads during the highest-rated network TV show, Friends, vs. 75% for the 45th Annual Grammy Awards and 58% for Fox reality show Fear Factor.

In my case, I generally use the TiVo to record shows that I really like and watch them later.  I do this because it’s convenient (i.e. I don’t have to rush home just to catch the show), but also because it allows me to skip the ads.  This isn’t necessarily an intentional thing to skip the ads, it’s just because I want to know what happens next on the show and the ads are getting in the way (although I will admit relief at being able to skip some of the really obnoxious commericials, like that Oxyclean guy).  With other shows, I’m just as likely to put the show on while I’m doing something else and I don’t think to fast-forward the commercials, unless they’re really annoying and they break my concentration.  On the flip side if I see an ad that looks interesting I may even stop fast-forwarding and go back to watch it.