'American Idol' Sets Social TV Records. Back in the old days, i.e., PF&T (pre-Facebook and Twitter), American Idol fans were still social. Yet instead of status updates and tweets, they did what they could with “the technology of those times,” explained Don Wilcox, Fox’s vp and gm of branded entertainment. That is, if you wanted to debate Justin vs. Kelly, you’d log onto message boards on AmericanIdol.com or, shudder, MySpace “before the exodus,” Wilcox joked.
Now, in this social TV era, the aging Idol franchise appears to have pivoted brilliantly. According to the social analytics firm Bluefin Labs, Idol—which wrapped season 11 last night—generated 5,956,134 total social comments, an all-time record in this medium’s short history. That’s 121 percent better than NBC’s The Voice, which generated 2,698,460 total comments, despite being the newer and arguably far buzzier show this season.
During Wednesday's finale, Idol registered 594,469 social mentions per hour. “Our social presence used to be purely digital,” said Wilcox. How FOX is the most social TV network. On the eve of Fox’s annual upfront, we spoke with David Wetheimer, the president of digital for Fox, who was also featured in a recent USA Today social TV story. The past year has been a defining one for the network’s social TV efforts. Partnering with Twitter for DM-based voting for X Factor and launching “Touch,” the first ever global social launch were just among their many innovations. According to Bluefin Labs (for data between 9/19-11 and 5/6/12), Fox is the leading social TV network in the US with the most amount of “total social comments (among any TV network; cable/premium cable or broadcast)” and has the most number of “total unique social authors (among any TV network; cable/premium cable or broadcast)”.
Trendrr data shows much of the same. FOX was the top social broadcast network for the month of April with 28% broadcast social share, with NBC trailing in second place at 21%. Lost Remote: What’s your role within Fox? LR: How does social TV fit into Fox’s TV lineup? Which new NBC shows will be a hit? Twitter breaks into TV dollars with ESPN deal. At ESPN’s upfront presentation today, the sports network announced a strategic relationship with Twitter to co-produce unique social experiences around larger sports events. Advertisers will be able to buy into both ESPN’s properties and the Twitter components in a single integrated buy: the first time Twitter has cut such a deal with a network around major events.
The first event gets underway shortly with the NBA Finals: fans will be encouraged — via ESPN and ABC promotion — to tweet photos of their best “game face” with the #gameface hashtag. At the end of each game, NBA Tonight will reveal the best photographs on-air and feature them in a gallery on ESPN.com. A key element of the partnership is the promotion on Twitter. For the Gameface promotion, #gameface will be a promoted trend, and ESPN will promote the contests on its @NBAonESPN account. This partnership makes a lot of sense for both parties. 20-somethings switch between media 27 times an hour. How Oprah is Revolutionizing Social TV in Real-Time. Oprah may have retired from her daytime talk show nearly a year ago, but she's hardly out of sight from her fan base. In fact, her latest series airing on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network is perhaps one of the most advanced shows in the social space right now, as she connects with her home and live audience in almost unprecedented ways.
Oprah's Lifeclass — which is currently in its second season, airing on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. CT — features various motivational speakers and guests who aim to help viewers overcome challenges. But this isn't your typical Oprah show. "We have a team backstage that monitors the tweets that come in, and we push out some for Oprah to see and discuss live on the show," a spokesperson for the OWN Network told Mashable backstage at a live taping. During most episodes, Oprah is positioned in front of several TV screens that display the tweets. Oprah's Lifeclass also incorporates Facebook polls into the show and offers real-time results. Survey: Fans Engage in Social TV Activity to Keep Shows on Air. 3 Things Advertisers Can Expect from Social TV in 2012. The line between television and mobile Web is getting blurry, which the industry experts at yesterday’s NBCUniversal SocialTV Symposium said is great for ratings.
“People are watching over an hour more of television than in past years,” said Stacey Shepatin, SVP, director of national broadcast at Hill Holiday. It looks like social TV is here to stay. Here’s what this means for advertisers. 1. Twitter and Facebook campaigns will be more interactive. “A hashtag is a campfire that people gather around,” said Joel Lunenfeld, VP of global brand strategy at Twitter. Facebook relies on the “simple human behavior of sharing,” said Kay Madati, head of entertainment strategy at Facebook. 2. NBC’s “Fashion Star” pairs aspiring designers with buyers at major retailers. 3. The network representatives agreed that it took multiple services across many platforms to measure engagement for social TV.
Social media makes it possible to measure viewer engagement before, during, and after the show. 5 Thriving Social TV Apps. SocialGuide Launches Twitter-Monitoring Social TV Dashboard. Social TV has been blowing up over the past couple of years, but there has been no really great way for networks to monitor the social media buzz surrounding their networks, series, and episodes…until now.
Earlier this month, social TV content and data solutions company SocialGuide launched SocialGuide Intelligence—a social TV data analytics engagement platform that taps into Twitter to give networks the big picture when it comes to how fans are engaging with their content. If you’re familiar with SocialGuide’s free social TV ratings, SocialGuide Intelligence (SGI) is like those ratings on steroids.
The service is described on the SocialGuide blog: SGI delivers daily, weekly, and monthly social TV reports for every program aired across 215 of the most popular US broadcast and cable television channels. We also provide the most comprehensive social TV ratings across these 215 channels, measuring the social activity for every program type and every program air. Publications Social TV's Evolution Ushers In New Era Of Content Creation 03/20.
Stripping away all the buzz and technology, at its core social media is just another way to tell a story and simultaneously grow your audience base and drive ratings. At MTV, we’ve been hyper-focused in growing our social ecosystem and exploring new ways to create quality experiences on these platforms. The hard work and investment appears to be paying off -- we’ve grown our social graph to nearly 100 million Facebooks likes and close to 5 million Twitter followers, as well as ranking as the No. 1 TV brand on many other platforms, such as Foursquare, Tumblr and Instagram. In addition to reach, our fans are deeply engaged and highly active with us on these social platforms. From the advent of radio, movies and television, content inspiration has always followed technological innovation. Social is no different.
As content creators, storytelling is core to what we do -- and we believe that social is just another platform to tell a story. This is a generation that grew up on gaming. Social TV highlights and takeaways from SXSW. Both Natan and I enjoyed a few days in Austin for SXSW Interactive this week, navigating even longer lines than last year, dodging the occasional rainstorm and searching for 3G service that actually worked.
As we previewed, there were over a dozen social TV events and sessions, and we saw many more TV folks compared to last year. Here are some SXSW highlights, and we asked several social TV execs who attended for their biggest takeway from the annual event: - Of all the TV-related sessions, the most entertaining featured Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain and the No Reservations team. In true Bourdain style, the session was packed with F-bombs and snazzy one-liners, with lots of very interesting social media nuggets. For example, when talking about why Bourdain and team controls the show’s Facebook and Twitter accounts — not the cable channel — he explained, “It was a defensive measure, taking over the Twitter and Facebook.
. - Pinterest was one of the big buzzy topics at SXSW. A Sampling of Social TV Apps | From Search to Screen Blog. The Current Landscape of Social TV Apps | From Search to Screen Blog. Study Shows Correlation Between Social Buzz and TV Ratings. A major undercurrent of the 2011 Fall TV season is the increasing role that social and digital media have on how consumers consume, discover and discuss TV shows. A longstanding question in the social TV space, however, is what impact social media buzz has on traditional television ratings. NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey Company, worked with Nielsen to try to better answer that question. In the study, NM Incite and Nielsen were able to find a statistically significant relationship that shows a correlation between online buzz and TV ratings. This correlation takes place throughout the TV show season, though the impact online buzz can have on ratings can vary based on a season's timeline.
Unsurprisingly, the strongest correlation takes place with younger demographics, viewers ages 12-17 and 18-34. In the 18-34 demographic, Nielsen found that social media buzz most closely aligned with TV ratings around the time that a show premieres. This relationship weakens as the show's season wears on. Google Could Be Planning to Completely Disrupt the TV Business [REPORT] Google, enormously successful in online advertising, might be casting an envious eye toward the $150 billion-per-year pay television market.
Such a venture has the potential to turn today's business of television advertising and distribution upside down. The company's already announced plans to build a fiber-optic high-speed Internet service in Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan., and according to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], now Google might be thinking about ways to expand that into pay video and telephone services. That would put Google in direct competition with cable companies and phone companies that have expanded into what's called the "triple play" of communications: cable television, telephone and high-speed Internet. The Wall Street Journal said "no final decisions have been made," but added Google has talked about including content owned by Disney, Time Warner and Discovery Communications.
Social TV. Relying on relationships to rebuild TV audiences. Marie-José Montpetit (MIT) Social TV could improve the viewing experience and provide new business opportunities for carriers OTHERS WORKING ON SOCIAL TV BT, London, England ClipSync, San Francisco, CA Intel, Santa Clara, CA Motorola, Schaumburg, IL This article is part of an annual list of what we believe are the 10 most important emerging technologies. See the full list here. The viewership for live television broadcasts has generally been declining for years. But something surprising is happening: events such as the winter Olympics and the Grammys are drawing more viewers and more buzz. Marie-José Montpetit, an invited scientist at MIT's Research Lab for Electronics, has been working for several years on social TV--a way to seamlessly combine the social networks that are boosting TV ratings with the more passive experience of traditional TV viewing. Login. Social TV ads bringing in millions, says TVGuide.com.
LocalResponse Buys Social TV Advertising And Check-In Platform Philo. Local Response, a recently launched social advertising platform that allows local businesses to respond to the “check-in” with marketing campaigns, is making its first acquisition today. The startup (formerly Buzzd) is acquiring Philo, a social TV check-in and advertising platform backed by North Bridge Venture Partners, DFJ Gotham, Eniac Ventures, and others. Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed but we are told the transaction is all stock. Similar to Miso and GetGlue, Philo operated a social check-in service for television shows. Using Philo, users could have a second screen experience with TV content by being able to see who else is watching show, access rewards for watching shows and checking in, and more. But LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta says that Philo has pivoted over the past year to an advertising model, called Reach.TV. Of course, LocalResponse has a similar model. Since its launch a few months ago, the company has been growing.
Where the NBA lives on TV when there’s no NBA season. Now that November has arrived, there’s a big void on TV as a result of the unfortunate NBA lockout. Games are cancelled at least through the end of the month. The most action the NBA is currently getting on TV, besides SportsCenter updates on the lockout, is Kris Humphries sudden divorce from uber-celeb Kim Kardashian, which is already being memeified on the social web. In an attempt to understand how the NBA lives on TV and through conversations about TV online, we took a look at some of the reality TV shows NBA players have popped up in.
Bluefin Labs, one of the main social TV data companies, pulled data for us around a few shows that have been on-air in October. We looked at Bluefin data for the following shows: La La’s Full Court Life (VH1) The New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony is married to host La La Vasquez. Here are some trends that summarized findings about the audiences for these shows: The male/female ratio for three of the shows are identical.