Are Television Ratings Driven By Social Networking Websites?
The big tv events always get big ratings, from the winter Olympics to the Super Bowl. Millions tuned into the Oscars and ratings for the Grammys were up. But for everyone of these events, millions were tweeting and poking each over giving commentary on everything happening. So is it true that social networking sites are affecting TV ratings?
Facebook or TV? How about both.
Alon Marcovici, vice-president of digital media for the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium is convinced that social networking is a big factor in tv ratings, although its not so easy to prove. A case in point is the men’s hockey final, which was a massive event especially in the US and Canada. During the game there were two major spikes of activity. The audience figures were 16.6 million viewers which grew to 22 million when the game went into overtime and Sidney Crosby scored the game winner.
While the game was on Facebook says more than 3.5 million status updates were sent. Tweeters were twitting in similar numbers, could it be that Twitter and Facebook users told their friendlist that the game was getting great and they had to tune in?
Although it cannot be proved, the power of social networking is known by all of us who have a wife or friends that seem to spend all day on Facebook. Marcovici thinks so, he said:- “I’m a full believer that the social media tools helped get viewership (for the Olympics). Our ratings were through the roof but there’s no way for us to denote whether they would’ve been through the roof with less Internet or more, less social media or more”.
“But it’s a powerful word-of-mouth tool and I’m of the belief that good content is its own promotion. So if you’ve got a great piece of content, (chatter about it) is going to help drive people to watch.”
He also pointed to an online chat attracting about 170,000 people during the men’s hockey final as a major eyeopener. Those numbers rival the ratings of some shows on broadcast television, he said. “You can put that up against a whole array of television channels and a lot of them don’t get 170,000 people watching something on any given day.”
Not everyone agrees though, the CBC’s head of television, Kirstine Stewart does not buy into the social media theory and instead points to changes in ratings measurement that have boosted the recorded audiences of shows in recent months. “I don’t think (social media) drive up viewership, I think what they do is make sure we keep our ground,” she said. “With (social media) it’s not even that it’s an extra add-on anymore, it’s expected that you provide opportunities to talk about the shows, to be able to find out more. “The online experience is no longer an extra extension of what you do on air, it’s part of the whole delivery of what you give people.”
Social media is definitely pushing more traffic to the websites of broadcasters and audience engagement around television shows is growing, said Matt Tatham, director of media relations for web tracking company Experian Hitwise.
Tatham does think that Twitter and Facebook influence TV ratings and increse them in some cases, although he too knows of no evidence to substantiate this claim.
“The traffic that Facebook and Twitter are sending to (websites of TV broadcasters) has increased quite a bit. There’s been an increase of 24% (over the last year) in the amount of traffic the two are sending to the broadcast media category in Canada,” he said. “It’s a natural step in the evolution of the technology. People are watching TV with either a laptop or a smartphone in front of them these days.”
My take? You have to be a fool to not beleive that social media is influencing th ratings. I know of so many people that follow hundreds or thousands of people on Twitter and have insane numbers of friends on Facebook. When you think a single message sent can be read by thousands instantly, and its saying ‘Turn on the tv now’. I know that the people using social media do what the computer tells them. With the forthcoming tv widgets which allow viewers to watch tv and chat on social sites on the same screen, social networking tv could be the future.
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