CBS (NYSE: CBS) has become the second major network to embrace TiVo’s (NSDQ: TIVO) second-by-second audience measurement program, Stop//Watch. While the companies’ relationship isn’t as extensive as the one signed by NBC and TiVo in November - NBC also separately agreed to sell the DVR operator’s interactive ad tags to advertisers - it shows that TiVo’s campaign to win over media companies is gaining some traction. A few years ago, networks and advertisers both feared that by allowing viewers to time-shift their TV watching, ratings and ad revenues would plummet. Now, having accepted time-shifting as a fact of life, the networks have joined advertisers in trying to make peace with the technology.

SEE ALSO: Interview: Tom Rogers, CEO, TiVo: DVR As Retriever, Not Just Receiver

The agreement appeared to be in the air at last month’s UBS Global Media & Communications Conference, when Dave Poltrack, president of CBS Vision, the company’s research unit, said that time-shifted viewing would help the TV industry, not harm it.

Advertising agencies have been less reluctant to drop their hostility to TiVo—Euro RSCG New York, Interpublic Group, Starcom, Carat USA and others have signed up for Stop//Watch, which randomly measures 20,000 TiVo boxes and collects data on the households and matches it to their viewing activity.
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