Buzz and TV Shows: Are We Listening to the Right Voices? - Ed Keller

The new television season is upon us and the trade press has been abuzz not only with talk about which new shows will thrive and which will die but also about social media and socalled social media ratingsSenior TV executives are joining the conversation Some see social media as a powerful amplifier and quotthe connective tissue that links everything togetherquot Others take a more tempered approach saying quotSocial media is a driver of buzz and engagement but it39s not the core driver of revenue or ratingsquotWhat has been completely missing from the discussion is that when it comes to social conversation about TV shows the action is still overwhelmingly offline not on social networking sites In fact more than 80 of conversations about TV shows take place face to face whereas only 2 are via social media The rest are either by phone text email While the social media conversations can be easily measured the real world conversation is both far bigger in numbers and often quite different from what gets talked about onlineWhile some talk about social media as quotword of mouth on steroidsquot the facts suggest it39s just not true for most shows The VMAs on MTV did quite well in social media with reports of more than 5 million posts The premier of this season39s Jersey Shore is said to have generated about a million social interactions But MTV is the exception not the ruleAnd indeed after these MTV successes there is a steep drop off For example the show with the nexthighest social engagement on the day of the Jersey Shore premier was CBS39s Big Brother with about 50000 mentions in social media Compare this to the almost 2 million conversations per day that highly talked about TV shows get according to my firm39s TalkTrackamp174 research which measures both offline conversations as well as online Social media conversation for a show like Big Brother is only 25 of that totalSo what39s the perspective look like when we take a quottotal socialquot view of TV during 201011 factoring in the water cooler conversations as well as tweetsFirst there was more talk about TV shows than there was the year before amp8211 word of mouth was up 6 And it was up far more in the Spring 16 than the Fall 2 So as the new season begins there is a lot of WOM momentum to build uponCBS was not only the ratings winner but its shows are the word of mouth winners as well CBS39s shows saw a 10 gain in word of mouth about its shows versus the prior year Fox is a close second although its word of mouth was largely flat on a yearoveryear basis This translates into 104 million conversations on a typical day about CBS shows and 93 million for Fox While NBC shows sparked more conversation than ABC ABC39s WOM was up sharply 40 from the prior year while NBC39s was down 21 Original cable programs trail CBS Fox and NBC but their word of mouth levels doubled versus the year beforeThe most talked about shows include an interesting mix of top rated shows and shows that capture word of mouth at a level that far exceeds their ratings Word of mouth winners that were also in the top 10 of the ratings include NCIS American Idol Dancing with the Stars CSI and Criminal Minds Shows whose word of mouth far outperforms their ratings success include Family Guy Two and a Half Men House Glee Law and Order and the only original cable show at the top of the most talked about list Jersey Shore Compared with the previous year Two and a Half Men Dancing Glee and Jersey Shore all saw large gains in word of mouth while CSI and American Idol took the biggest dipsIf you want to get the conversation going about your TV shows think female and think young These are the most frequent talkers when it comes to TV showsamp160It39s now on to the new season and time for the word of mouth to begin anew If you want to know what39s really being said make sure you listen to all the voices and not just the digital fewEd Keller CEO of the Keller Fay Group has been called quotone of the most recognized names in word of mouthquot The publication of Keller39s book The Influentials has been called the quotseminal moment in the development of word of mouthquot Ed can be contacted at ekellerkellerfaycom You can follow Ed Keller on Twitter kellerfay Read all Edamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at WOM MattersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Buzz and TV Shows: Are We Listening to the Right Voices? - Ed Keller

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