On April 1st 1986 the broadcasting corporation in Hessen the "Hessischer Rundfunk, HR" has changed its programme schedules for the 1st and 3rd programme, It will be shown which reasons have led to this change and the role of tv-audience research. By analysing the data from GfK-panel before and after the programme change a characteristic weakness of the programme schedules was revealed. The entertainment segments in the first programme could be enlarged by putting the "Hessenschau" (the news magazine with regional information) into the 3rd programme. These changes have led to an expected increase in audience ratings respectively in decrease of market share for the competing ZDF under the 50- percent-level.
We emphasise in our paper especially the VCR- playback behavior: when do recording and play back occurs, what will be recorded, when does time-shift-viewing happen. We conducted finally a special analyses to the effects of remote control on watching advertising blocks. As the main result we show that "zapping" is hardly evident during advertising blocks. If there is any "zapping" then it happens before and after commercials.