ListenFirst couldn’t be more excited to share the Birdseye Report | Industry Deep Dive Media & Entertainment which we’ve collaborated with Twitter on and was just released today. We’re celebrating the release of this great report the only way we know how – by sharing even more data!
Here are 5 bonus TV industry related insights we found while researching the Birdseye Report about how the Twitter audience is engaging with TV content.
Insight #1. Use Tweet Threads As Push Notifications About New Episodes
WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and Loki all shared Tweets reading “
this tweet to receive reminders when new episodes” with those Tweets generating as many as 218,611 responses. Asking fans to engage with Tweets for reminders about when new episodes drop has become a best practice for keeping the online conversation going around TV shows that are released weekly.
Insight #2: Anime Is Becoming More Popular
In the Birdseye Media & Entertainment report we focused on how Korean entertainment became so much more talked about in the last year, but that’s also true about Anime. There were 136,951,504 Tweets mentioning Anime in 2021, a 29.78% increase from the volume of Tweets mentioning Anime during 2020.
Meanwhile, the Twitter conversation increased by 249% around Crunchyroll, the video streaming service that focuses on anime, manga, and dorama, comparing 1/1 – 11/16 in 2021 to that time period in 2020. That was the biggest increase for any major network or streamer in 2021, with Crunchyroll only trailing Netflix, MTV, NBC, and Disney+ for the title of being the most talked about network overall on Twitter for the year.
In a time when the creation of live action content is especially challenging because of the pandemic, the audience is especially receptive to Japanese animation.
Insight #3: Nostalgia Drives Engagement For Legacy Kids Shows
Kids shows are breaking through on Twitter by targeting adults. For example, the most
successful TV Tweet in 2021 got 2,626,762 engagements and was a video from Nick Jr. where Steve explained why he left Blue’s Clues way back in 2002. Meanwhile, a Teletubbies Tweet showing that the Teletubbies got vaccinated got 557,972 engagements. The current audience of kids shows may not be able to read yet, but there are a lot of former kids who are on Twitter and still enthusiastic when talking about these multi-generational hits.
Insight #4: The Twitter Audience Views Broadcast TV As A Long Term Relationship
Of the 10 broadcast TV shows that generated the most engagement between January – October 2021, they’ve been on the air for an average of 15.7 seasons. Similarly, during the same time period, the 10 ad supported cable shows that had the most engagement on Twitter have been on the air for an average of 12.9 seasons.
As we cover in the Birdseye Media & Entertainment report, streaming shows are becoming more talked about on Twitter, while broadcast and ad support cable TV shows are becoming less talked about. That said, broadcast does have one key advantage over streaming. A 2018-2019 study by Ampere Analysis found that shows on streamers such as Netflix average 2.1 seasons, compared to shows on free-to-air networks averaging 6.5 seasons.
Streamers like Netflix have popularized the practice of promoting almost all of their shows from their main social accounts which have a huge social following and not setting up dedicated social channels for individual shows. That strategy makes total sense when promoting a project that will only be around for a couple seasons. However, given that broadcast shows on average have a longer lifespan, creating unique social accounts for those shows and slowly building a unique audience over time is what ultimately will lead to more engagement on Twitter for broadcast.
Insight #5: The Lack Of Elections Hurt Late Night Talk Shows On Twitter
The late night talk shows aggregated on this chart are Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Late Night with Seth Meyers, A Little Late with Lilly Singh, The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Conan, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Real Time With Bill Maher, Desus & Mero, and Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.
Late night shows are traditionally among the best performing broadcast TV shows on Twitter. However, there was -32.43% less Twitter engagement around content shared by broadcast and cable late night talk shows in January – October in 2021 compared to during the same time period in 2020. In 2020, there was a big peak in engagement in February right before the pandemic hit and in the Fall around the elections and there were no comparable peaks in 2021. With this being a midterm elections year, and given how big a conversation driver politics is for late night talk shows, 2022 will likely be a bounce back year for the genre on Twitter.
*All the Twitter data shared in this blog post is global.
Looking for more audience insights about TV? Either download the Birdseye Report | Industry Deep Dive Media & Entertainment or request a ListenFirst Demo!
