Though it seems more Twitter buzz equals a better box office for movies, the same can’t be said of social networking and television ratings.
A social media monitoring company called Viralheat spent a month comparing the amount of mentions about a TV show on social networks with their Neilsen ratings. And they found that online buzz on its own was not a good enough indicator. What made the difference was the sentiment expressed.
If you take a look at the chart on Mashable.com, you’ll see that Lost viewers weren’t many, but they had a lot to say – and half of it was not good. But Dancing with the Stars had great ratings with very little said about it online.
Perhaps it also has something to do with the age range of the viewers versus the ages of those who like to make the most of internet speed.
But it’s not even that simple. The results for the show Glee, a program aimed at a younger audience, reveal that though the ratings weren’t great, the buzz online was pretty good. On the other hand, American Idol skews pretty young too, and there wasn’t even as much buzz online about it as there was for Glee. American Idol is old, Glee is new…who knows what the difference is? The other shows on the chart that show little online chatter and good ratings were NCIS, Two and a Half Men, Cold Case, The Mentalist and Desperate Housewives – all shows that are on later at night and aimed at an older audience.
We’ll leave it up to the research guys to figure it all out.
Tags: Internet Speed, Social Networking, Twitter