The Sharknado that hit Hollywood earlier this month stirred up quite a buzz on Twitter and across several media outlets. As reported by the official Twitter blog, #sharknado received over 318,000 tweets and peaked at over 5,000 tweets per minute. Although it ended up causing a social phenomenon, SyFy’s original movie, “Sharknado,” did not fare as well in the reported ratings. Now that we’re more than a week past the sharktastic event, TiVo Research and Analytics is looking back on the aftermath to see if TiVo households decided to catch up on the campy shark attack meets tornado thriller on their TiVos over the weekend.The Live + 3 day ratings among TiVo households doubled from the live ratings. At first pass, it may seem that this increase in ratings may have been caused by the whirlwind of noise that Sharnado kicked up, but contrary to what would be assumed, the increase in viewership looked pretty normal. TRA looked back at its Stop||Watch data from September 2010 to see how SyFy’s “Sharktopus” stacked up in live and live + 3 day ratings. Not so surprisingly, TRA found a similar pattern between the two original movies. Both Live and Live + 3 day ratings were about the same, with “Sharknado” barely leading in Live + 3 day ratings at its peak by a few tenths of a point.The story couldn’t just stop there. Not with such a great topic. Utilizing the Auto Ownership data provided by Experian Automotive, we looked at the types of folks that are regularly tuning in to the SyFy network and may have contributed to the Twitter hubbub. TRA found that drivers of Ford, Chevrolet, and Buick brand vehicles are SyFy watchers. So, if Ford is looking to target future buyers with its next campaign, SyFy would be a good bet for reaching the target audience.Stay tuned as TRA looks into the Stop||Watch data for the re-airing of “Sharknado” on Thursday, July 18th. TRA will compare ratings from week to week and identify the top watched moments between both airings.For more information, please visit us at www.traglobal.com/blog or send an email to dailytra@traglobal.com.Check us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggers.comFollow 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 MediaBizBloggers.com management or associated bloggers. MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries.
