Live TV viewing continued to decline in the first quarter, dropping by 10 minutes to 4 hours, 21 minutes per day per person among adults, according to Nielsen's Q1 Total Audience Report.

Usage of apps and the web on smartphones jumped by 20 mlnutes per day, Nielsen said. Viewing of time-shifted TV increased by 1 minute per day to 34 minutes daily.

Related: Facebook Finds Distracted Viewing Among Smartphone Users

Nielsen said the number of pay TV subscribers to cable, telco and satellite services fell 1.4% to 97.8 million household in the first quarter from 99.2 million a year ago.

The number of broadcast-only homes rose to 15.2 million from 13.3 million. The number of broadband-only homes also rose, to 5.3 million from 3.9 million.

The share of homes subscribing to subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix rose to 57% from 50% a year ago.

Related: Netflix Rises to Top Four in ‘Must Keep TV’ Rankings

Delayed viewing was an even bigger factor for TV's most time-shifted shows in 2016, according to Nielsen.

AMC's Better Call Saul saw a 278.7% increase in viewers from time shifting, ranking it first in percentage change. A year ago, Better Call Saul got a 215.2% increase from time shifting, ranking it third. The top show in 2015 was Fargo, which registered a 240.3% increase.

FX's American Horror Story was No. 2 with a 245.5% increase, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, also on FX, was third at 238.6%.

Nielsen said three reality shows made the top 10, up from just one a year ago.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

A full 74% of NBC viewers watch primetime in real time, according to a new survey from TiVo, just ahead of the 72% who do so at CBS. ABC weighed in at 71% and Fox at 68%, while The CW, with its young-skewing audience, had just 57% of prime programming watched live.

In terms of all-day viewing, NBC and CBS tied at 82%.

Among the top 10 cable networks, ESPN was, not surprisingly, the most live viewed in prime at 93%, ahead of TBS at 90%, CNN at 89%, History at 88% and Food Network, Fox News, HGTV and USA at 87%.

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CW had the top three time-shifted shows on broadcast: The Flash at 63.1% time-shifted, Arrow at 58.8% and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow at 57%. Then it was NBC’s The Blacklist and ABC’s Modern Family both at 54.3%.

Read more at B&C.

Content providers take heed – according to TV measurement stalwart Nielsen, the proliferation of digital video recorders, video on demand and digital content have pushed traditional viewing habits out the window, with some shows attracting their biggest gains in audience well beyond the traditional seven-days after original air.

In advertising circles, the Live-plus-7-day (L7) rating period is becoming increasingly irrelevant as viewers watch content on a variety of devices at different times.

In a press briefing Tuesday, Nielsen senior vice president of audience insights Glenn Enoch unveiled research from the measurement company’s clients as part of its Total Audience Measurement initiative showing viewership can rise after the L7 window between from 4% to 58% depending on the genre of programming. Enoch said that in the small sample of programming, reality/competition shows fared the worst with 18-49 year-olds in extending viewing, with only a 4% audience gain beyond seven days. The biggest increase came from animated comedy shows, where 58% of the audience lift came between day eight and day 118.

READ MORE: Nielsen dismisses "noise" about total audience delays.

Enoch said that by far the majority of viewing came in the first week after original air – as much as 88% for reality shows. But as viewing habits change, viewers – especially younger viewers – are time-shifting more often and for longer periods of time.

VOD is the primary driver for the extended viewing period, Enoch said. DVR usage drops dramatically after the seventh day after original air, while VOD usage has its greatest lift period after seven days.

VOD watchers are also more engaged: they watch an average of 30 minutes while those who view live TV watch an average of 15 minutes, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen began making its Total Audience Measurement products available to a select number of clients in January, who have been evaluating the data.

Senior vice president of product leadership Kelly Abcarian said Nielsen’s total audience offering will be more widely available in the third quarter of this year.

“This enables them to understand how that audience builds across time,” Abcarian said. “So the networks and the broadcasters and the content owners can have more firepower to talk about how their audience looks across time so they can better positon and plan and sell that out to advertisers. Secondly, the advertisers want to access younger audiences, they want access to more available inventory. That’s what this data set enables them to understand across both the buy and sell side.”

READ MORE: Five ways to prepare for the audience measurement revolution.

One thing that content providers can take from the data is that it may behoove them to make full current seasons of their shows available on demand to distributors to take full advantage of viewership trends.

Abcarian said that while some of the content showed no VOD viewing at all, that wasn’t because viewers didn’t want to watch the show on demand, but that it wasn’t available on demand.

“I think this data will give them much better insights around how to make the content available but even more importantly how to monetize that content with the advertisers,” Abcarian said.  

Nielsen has been conducting client advisory boards, where companies who have been evaluating the data meet regularly to talk about their findings and new uses for the data. Jessica Hogue, also a senior vice present of product leadership at Nielsen, said the level of cooperation has been encouraging.

“We’re really quite pleased with the level of engagement we have across all aspects of our program,” Hogue said. “We have many clients that are ready for evaluation and are starting to look at that data already today. We continue to grow our pipeline of clients that are integrating for VOD and digital measurement across the board. We think that will continue to grow because our clients are continuing to evolve the way they distribute their content.”

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Time-shifted data has a significant effect on the average ratings for scripted programming, and it’s no different when it comes to miniseries and anthology series. SundanceTV’s 2014 series The Honorable Woman averaged the fewest total viewers of the 10 mini/anthology series depicted at right. The eight-part Middle East political thriller averaged 127,000 total live-plus-same-day viewers, but tallied 294,000 live-plus-7-day viewers. That’s a 131% increase in average total viewers, thanks to L7 data.

FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show is the top-rated and most-watched mini/anthology series since the start of 2014. Freak Show averaged 3.9 million total viewers on a live-plus-same- day basis and more than 7.6 million viewers live-plus-7-day. That’s a 95% bump in average total viewership.

Few cable series receive a more significant bump from time-shifted data than AHS. One that does might be fellow FX anthology Fargo. The original live-plus-same-day numbers for the Emmy-winning series doubled when measured on a live-plus-7-day basis. Season one averaged 1.9 million live-plus-same-day viewers. That number ballooned to around 3.8 million on a live-plus-7 basis. No wonder FX wants to do away with live-plus-same- day ratings.

HBO anthology series True Detective averaged 2.6 million live-plus-same- day viewers, but over 4 million per live-plus-7-day data.

History’s Sons of Liberty was cable’s most-watched and highest-rated miniseries over the past 12 months, averaging 3.1 million viewers on a live-plus-same-day basis, and 4.5 million live-plus-7-day viewers. Texas Rising also averaged 3.1 million live-plus-same-day viewers, but benefited less from time-shifted data, finishing its run with a 4.1 million live-plus-7-day average.

BET’s The Book of Negroes benefited the least from time-shifting, getting just an 18% bump from live-plus-7-day data. Spike TV’s Tut jumped 65% on a live-plus-7 basis, a more significant bump than Texas Rising, Sons of Liberty or Book of Negroes.