Twitter, TV and advocacy: How social media is affecting broadcast television audience behaviours

When the world zigs I often zag (or better yet draw a squiggly line) so as news breaks that YouTube now serves up 2 billion videos daily, i’ve been thinking not about how social technologies benefit online video audience behaviours but rather how social technologies can – and have – been affecting broadcast television audience behaviours.

I was interested to read this recent AdAge article which cuts through the hype surrounding the supposed shift in audience behaviour from broadcast TV to online video services such as Hulu, iPlayert et al and instead suggests that social technology’s greatest impact is seen around programme buzz. Particularly nice is the assertion that whilst online video (as well as PVR’s) mean we aren’t slaves to the networks’ schedules, “a change in expectations is not quite the same as a change in behavior“. So, if 85% of us still watch our TV at the time the networks deem appropriate, how are social technologies supporting or enhancing this pre-existing behaviour? Simple: they’re making it a more shared, more social experience.

The key social technology affecting this new behaviour is – you guessed it – Twitter. It makes sense really given that it’s emphasis is on short, timely messages that you can share and interact with in real time. We may not be in the same room to watch the season finale of LOST but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a shared experience; Twitter is allowing us to interact online with anyone else in our network (as well as likeminded strangers using a shared hashtag) creating a more social experience.

Smart broadcasters should be sitting up and taking note. All this conversation – all this buzz – acts as a great place to identify advocacy. In the same way a movie’s bottom line can be affected by the quick spread of favourable or negative reviews across social media channels from blogs to tweets, TV shows can – to a lesser extent – be made or broken via social media. If I see that every week a group of my friends (whose opinions I largely trust) keep announcing via Twitter  that “30 rock is frikkin’ hilarious” I am going to be far more inclined to investigate what all the -ahem – buzz is about. For example, Glee’s success (particularly in the US) has been attributed to a strong online fan community of ‘Gleeks’. The result of this fervent advocacy means that toward the end of April, Glee was attracting around 13.6 million viewers, up on the season average 7.9 million viewers.

NBC in the US have taken this advocacy model to it’s logical conclusion this week with the launch of their ‘Fant it’ social media platform. ‘Fan it‘ is designed to reward viewers for advocating NBC shows via various social media platforms. Whilst I imagine such platforms are a little way off for UK audiences, there is little doubt that social media can provide a great platform to harness viewer advocacy to grow audiences.