A ton of hot shows hit the tube this fall–and a ton of tweets, sent by viewers, hit Twitter in response them. But is buzz really a strong predictor of a premiere night's success?
This is the question Cambridge-based social media marketing platform uberVU sought to answer. The company decided to track conversations around the 23 new primetime shows from ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX on their platform. The team set up streams for each show and isolated mentions of show hashtags and keywords, ŕ la "betrayalabc" and "betrayal TV." And the results will surprise you:
Mentions did not mean ratings. Not to mention that, according to the company's findings, "shows with the highest and lowest amount of mentions before premiere night didn’t necessarily land in the same place in viewership—this was still the case after two weeks of being on the air."
Not to be negative, but the study also showed that less-than-enthused tweets were a stronger predictor than pure mentions. Social buzz around new shows only served as an accurate predictor for two of the top five programs, and three of the five least-watched shows.
Rave social reviews did not mean great ratings, either. Publicized positive sentiments held no effect on great ratings. Of the five shows with the highest reviews only one–NBC’s Blacklist–landed in the top five in viewers. Three out of the five shows with the highest positive sentiment landed in the bottom ten in viewers.
Still Don't believe us? Here's an example. With Andy Samberg. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a FOX comedy featuring the Lonely Island funny man came in fourth in total mentions with 2,259 plus a high sentiment score–enough social buzz to peg the show in the top five for uberVU's social predictions. On premiere night, however, the result were underwhelming. The show fell flat in the Bottom Five with only 4.24 million viewers.
