Tag Archives: Twitter

ABC’s The Catch – Post 3

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With the recent release of the official trailer, The Catch has gained over 1,500 followers on Facebook which lands them at 28,533 followers today. Their Twitter is in the low range of 3,777 but the premiere date is more than a month away so those numbers may rise closer to March 24th. The show’s first major promotional spot was last Thursday during the #TGIT lineup winter premiere night. The Catch will be joining the lineup taking the place of How To Get Away With Murder and being led in by The Family at 9:00pm which premieres on March 3rd then the local news afterwards at 11:00pm.

It does have to compete with shows with older followings like Elementary on CBS and Shades of Blue on NBC. Both shows also have strong female leads but what their advantages come with female leads who are veterans in a primetime slot. Jennifer Lopez’s (34.8 million followers) notoriety for Shades of Blue helps the show maintain a loyal fan base with a collective Twitter following for the show at 16k. Elementary (which premiered in 2012) has a Twitter following of over 66k and Lucy Liu’s (181k followers) fan base has been a great support for the show. Mireille Enos’ Twitter was created in January 2016 (most likely for the show) and only has 431 followers. The three tweets that she has are about The Catch; two Instagram posts and one post announcing the premiere date. Hopefully social media will help this show live up to the #TGIT powerhouses built by Shonda Rhimes.

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Cooper’s Guide – Post #2

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During the brief hiatus that Cooper’s Guide is undergoing because of post-season football, I decided to look at the social media presence of the show and was disappointed with what I discovered.  The show only has slightly over 2,000 followers on its Twitter page.  A couple of its stars boast solid followings, with Meaghan Rath and Charlie Saxton having about 55,000 and 42,000 followers, respectively.  However, Jack Cutmore-Scott, who plays the title character, only has about 500 followers and Justin Bartha, perhaps the series’ most recognizable actor following his appearances in the Hangover films, does not even have a Twitter page.  Furthermore, Cooper’s Guide does not have an easily identifiable hashtag that can be used to discuss the show. This makes it difficult for me to track how often the show is being mentioned on social media, but, even worse, it means that fans do not have a single unified hashtag that they can use to discuss the show with each other.  With almost non-existent social media discussion, I wonder how the show will maintain enough buzz to do well after its hiatus.

Minority Report- Post #11 Publicity

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This week Minority Report’s rating actually went up. It went from a .63 to a .7 but then viewers actually dropped from 1.75 million to 1.74 million viewers. It is up for debate whether or not the break from the show during the week of November 9th was successful or not for the show when they aired a Bones rerun instead. Minority Report luckily had a higher rating than the Bones rerun last week.

After watching a lot of television I have seen a multiple commercials for other series that premiered this season, but I haven’t seen any for Minority Report. I wouldn’t even know about the show if it weren’t for this class or my internship this past summer. Fox has not done a good job advertising for Minority Report. There are things on social media, but the numbers of followers is very low. The show only has a little over 8,000 followers on Twitter and a little over 120,000 likes on Facebook. I wonder how the show would have done if it had more publicity in the beginning.

Rosewood Post #5

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Twitter is the new Nielsen. At least that’s how I am viewing it to get an accurate account of how viewers are responding to Fox’s new comedy-drama series “Rosewood”. Twitter provides the reason why viewership for certain series has soared or fell flat over the course of a week. According to TheWrap, there were many harsh tweets about the series premiere, calling it “cheesy” and “painful.” A good portion of the backlash on Twitter is centered on the series’ writing and casting choices. Many viewers believed the writing was cheesy and the casting especially of Detective Annalise Villa, played by Jaina Lee Ortiz, just was not right. Many were angry that Rosewood’s love interest was not of African American descent. One twitter user tweeted, “Was it too much to ask for Morris Chestnut’s love interest to be a black woman? I mean really?! ‪#Rosewood” I will be interested to see if the producers of “Rosewood” will take feedback from Twitter users, and make some changes.

Trending Now: The Odd Couple

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Since The Odd Couple will be on hiatus for the next two weeks because of the NCAA Basketball Tournament airing on CBS, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the show’s social media presence. As now more than ever, social media presence is an integral part of a television show’s success, it appears that The Odd Couple is taking full advantage of all that twitter has to offer. For example, as a nice tie-in with CBS’s NCAA coverage, the stars of The Odd Couple have filled out NCAA brackets and the show’s twitter feed is encouraging viewers to see how their brackets measure up with those of the stars, Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon. Additionally, the stars have been live tweeting and the show has been posting photos of the different cast members tweeting for both the east and west coast feeds. They even suggested a drinking game, consisting of everyone taking a drink every time that Matthew Perry wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes! So far, they have 3,263 followers, which is a drop in the ocean, compared to ABC’s rival new spring 2015 sitcom, Fresh Off The Boat, which has 16,700 followers. Therefore, The Odd Couple has a way to go before being the number 1 new comedy on Twitter.

One Big Happy Pre & Post Season Premier

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As expected, the promotion for One Big Happy dramatically increased as soon as March hit. First, executive producer Ellen DeGeneres talked about and even showed clips from the show during her talk show time. One Big Happy commercials also became more frequent as the premier date approached. Also, The Today Show’s Matt Lauer gave OBH a shout out during the eight o’clock hour. Lauer also conducted an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, asking about her roll as executive producer, and what she wanted the audience to take away from watching the show. DeGeneres said she did not want the show to focus on the lesbian co star, but rather have it just be one of the many components in the show that make it unique. DeGeneres also tweeted about the show several times before the premier.

 

After One Big Happy premiered, I looked to several websites like Rotten Tomatoes, to see what critics thought of the show, and the results were not pretty. Most websites said the show was cute but lacked original humor. Others said the show relied too heavily on the humor from past sitcoms. One critic from Rotten Tomatoes said, “Although Ellen DeGeneres is an executive producer of the show, her influence is undetectable.” Another said, “Obvious, dumb and mostly unfunny, One Big Happy is an embarrassment for all involved.” And the comments only got worse. I don’t see the show surviving for very long.

Programming and Program Development

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Programming has traditionally been made up of two dominant genres, the drama and the situational comedy (or sitcom). In a typical week’s prime time schedule, the major five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, and NBC) air a combined 43 hours of dramas and 18 hours of comedy. Another notable genre in the current schedule is reality and competition shows which currently make up 14 hours of the broadcast schedule. When looking into the broader scope of television, more and more genres begin to emerge. Currently on cable and premium networks, dramas and sitcoms also dominate the schedule but they are accompanied by more diverse programming such as mini-series, more reality, and developing genres such as mock reality. Schedules are constantly changing and adapting as new programs are developed and programs begin to come off the air. The development process is unique for each genre and the current season has already showed some success and failures.

Drama

The beginning of any drama series typically happens in one of three ways. Either a writer-producer meets with the network and a concept emerges which then turns into a script or a writer-producer already has a script and pitches it to the network. The third common way for a show to develop is for a highly regarded star to decide they want to do a television program and a team is assigned to develop something which fits their needs. Once a script is written and the network approves along with a cast and crew, a pilot is produced and shown to the network. How many pilots are commissioned is dependent upon the networks overall tone, for example The CW is unlikely to produce a large amount of comedy pilots since their schedule is dominated by dramas, along with their current needs. If not many dramas survive the season, more are likely to be commissioned for the next season.

In the current pilot season, Vulture magazine has already spotted several programming trends. One of which is franchise programming. Shows such as NCIS, The Vampire Diaries, and Chicago Fire all have related pilots being worked on. Going off of the success of Once Upon a Time, there is also a tendency towards magical or supernatural themed programs. Vulture predicts a rise in “House” type characters as well as many bigger name stars following Kevin Bacon back to the smaller screen. Much of this is based off of the successes of this past season and an effort to keep promising trends rolling.

One of the more successful launches this Spring was Fox’s The Following starring Kevin Bacon. The show has already been picked up for a second season and has been consistently winning it’s time slot.

A significant drama which went off the air this spring was The CW’s Gossip Girl. While not a major player in the ratings, Gossip Girl was still influential in it’s run on the CW as a trend setter for other programming. The network saw an uptick in the amount of programs focusing on the glamorous and elite such as 90210 and this season’s The Carrie Diaries.

Cable networks typically are more adventurous in their programming and have been seeing a lot of success lately.

walking-dead-season-3-castAmong the biggest successes is AMC’s The Walking Dead. It is a slightly nontraditional show that has garnered huge ratings for the cable network. It was a major Sunday night competitor this season despite not being on a major broadcast network.

Another major program this spring was The History Channel’s mini series The Bible. It received a lot of attention for it’s content and created a viewing war with The Walking Dead.

Comedies

Comedies are developed in a very similar way to dramas. Typically more comedy pilots are produced each year because they are shorter and quicker to make. However, more concepts are abandoned and there are different standards for determining what shows get picked up. A comedy will rarely be picked up just because it’s funny. Comedies are evaluated more based on the current schedule and where there are holes. If a current show is going off the air or needs a stronger lead in, then a comedy has a stronger chance of making it to air. There is also a different target demographic for comedies. They are intended to appeal to younger, typically less educated, and lower income than other types of programming.

30983NBC had a much hyped new series in 1600 Penn which was given an early release of the pilot. The show did not hold an audience well and saw continually declining ratings. NBC chose to end the season early by airing multiple episodes in a night. The scheduling change combined with declining ratings led to cancellation rumors.

A more successful show this spring has been ABC’s How to Live With Your Parents For The Rest of Your Life. It had a late premiere date but has still seen favorable ratings. It focuses on a single mom having to move back in with her parents and the struggles that ensue from her eccentric family.

This season will see the end of the long running NBC comedy The Office. The show was a hit for the network for many years and led to similar programs such as Parks and Recreation which is still on air. Show Runner Greg Daniels promises a heartfelt goodbye to match the series all around tone and characters.

Reality

There are four general rules that define reality television. The first is that they do not involve actors, at least in the traditional sense. Second, while they may be planned, they are not written in the way that comedies and dramas are. They are always produced on location, and finally they have some sort of special gimmick. When in development, these programs are judged more on the potential of the idea than the reputations of the writers or performers. Reality television has created a place for itself in the schedule over the past few decades. It is especially prominent on cable networks with networks such as E! and Bravo airing almost exclusively reality in their prime time slots. Bravo recently announced they have 17 new series being planned, nearly all of which are reality.

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On broadcast networks, it is most common to see reality programming in the form of competition. The Voice saw a cast change this spring with Shakira and Usher replacing Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green as judges. The show has been seeing decent numbers with the new judges.

Emerging Trends

Mock Reality

Reality is clearly a genre which is here to stay. Over the years, reality programming has reached to some pretty extreme levels as far as the types of stories and characters that are put on the air. This has led to a new trend of mock realities, shows which are meant to look like reality shows but are scripted or improv and actually make fun of reality programming.

Mock Block Monday

E! has an hour every week titled “Mock Block Monday” which features two of these Mock Reality Shows. The first is Burning Love which is an imitation of dating shows such as The Bachelor. The second is After Lately which is a supposed documentary of the office of Chelsea Lately, another popular program of theirs.

Other networks are picking up on this trend as well. MTV recently announced a new show, appropriately called Reality Stars, which will be about four friends who get involved in reality television. BET has committed to a second season of The Real Husbands of Hollywood. The show follows men of Hollywood in their “natural environment”.

Social Media

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Nielsen announced earlier this winter that it plans to begin using Twitter to measure program popularity. This focus on the “second screen” could give more insight into what viewers are responding too and begin to dictate programming decisions. It can help programmers adapt to the growing social engagement of viewers and use social media trends to their advantage.

 

 Sources

1.http://www.fox.com/the-following/
2.http://epguides.com/grid/
3.http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/04/07/bubble-watch-vegas-craps-out-on-friday-go-on-still-on-the-bubble-how-to-live-with-your-parents-and-hannibal/176840/
4. http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/04/07/bubble-watch-vegas-craps-out-on-friday-go-on-still-on-the-bubble-how-to-live-with-your-parents-and-hannibal/176840/
5. http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/03/05/the-following-monday-ratings/
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fFq-w5CxN8
7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/the-walking-dead-ratings_n_2993622.html
8. http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/12/18/gossip-girl-finale-ratings/
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufkXlmtHJnw
10. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/fall-season-brings-shift-in-tv-ratings-race/
11. http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/nielsen-using-twitter-data-to-gauge-tv-programming-popularity/
12. http://www.bibleseries.tv/

13. http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/2013/apr/060413-mtv-is-launching-a-new-tv-series-called-reality-stars.htm

14. http://www.bravotv.com/blogs/the-dish/bravo-announces-17-new-18-returning-series?page=0,1

15. http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/03/17/the-office-tease-series-finale/

16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzerIyOI9s

17. http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/comedy-pilots-2013-everything-you-need-to-know.html

18. http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/pilots-2013-dramas.html

19. The Business of Television, Bleumenthol & Goodenough