No fights broke out on Twitter Friday, as most cable news shows took black friday off. The Kelly File was the accidental winner of the day, with 488 mentions during her show, but that number is about 1/5th of what the typical winner gets. Tomorrow’s schedule returns to weekend normal, more or less, so we should see the month end on a more typical volume of activity.
Or maybe not, if you all are still out shopping. My word of advice: as Sergeant Esterhaus always said, Let’s be careful out there.
As announced yesterday, I have dropped #blackfish from the list of tracked shows; it has not been shown recently on CNN but is being shown around the world. The effects of this are significant, although not dramatic. We can see this in CNN’s mentions if we either include or exclude the hashtag from our filters:
| #Blackfish? | Tweet Count | Unique Tweeters | Reach | Male | Female |
| CNN – With | 28408 | 21136 | 414291387 | 61 % | 39 % |
| CNN – Without | 24269 | 19116 | 404695485 | 68 % | 32 % |
On the whole, there were 4176 mentions of #blackfish yesterday, almost all of which did not also mention CNN.
For the day, All In with Chris Hayes had the best show hour of all.
Final note: I will not be posting stats for Thanksgiving day, as there is very little news actually being shown on Thursday…
One of the things that makes Twitter different is that it’s a world-wide conversation, even if we think the topics are purely domestic. That makes the Twitter ratings not just an adjunct to the Nielsen ratings but a window into a different world. Piers Morgan, for example, has a world-wide presence on CNN and other platforms, and so he often has the “best day” on Twitter because of that world-wide conversation.
But I want to mention another topic which is interesting — the #Blackfish documentary CNN ran. It’s been run in the UK as well, and there’s currently a large conversation on Twitter amongst UK viewers. It doesn’t show up as any particular show in the ratings, but it affects CNN in general and makes #blackfish the most talked about tag. I’m going to start filtering out #blackfish shortly because the conversation isn’t about CNN any more, but it’s an interesting reflection of how a conversation can take on a life of its own.
You can see any number of articles on the web about “the second screen” — essentially how viewers will have a (e.g.) tablet in hand monitoring social media while viewing a TV program. I think that paradigm is very narrow-sighted: real conversations can linger on long after that. If you’re a network, and want to monetize this, you need to find a way to keep your advertisers in the conversation as it winds on. One way, of course, is to advertise on Twitter. But another way should be found to involve advertisers in the ongoing conversation. That’s a new approach, and fraught with peril (in terms of potentially alienating your Twitter audience), but while there may be dragons this way, there is also treasure.
Reflecting on yesterday, Chris Hayes managed to spark the largest conversation of the day; even with this being a normally quiet week, his mention count was very healthy, driven by a discussion about religious freedom for corporations and the Iran negotiations.
I think I would have expected the announcement of the Iran deal to have triggered a burst of activity on Fox News yesterday, but apparently it’s not as animating as Obamacare for Fox’s audience. As a result, Monday was fairly quiet, with The Ed Show taking its usual first place in the best-hour ratings.
After Piers Morgan’s blow out on Saturday, things returned to normal on Sunday, with the Melissa Harris-Perry Show winning best-hour and best-day. It’s interesting to see the steady progression of activity on MSNBC as the morning wears on from the 8am through 11am hours: 806, 1203, 1611, and then 2524 mentions in each hour, respectively. One wonders how the mentions (and thus the ratings) would progress if the shows shifted later in the day by an hour or two. I’m sure there are plenty of people who dearly love the Up w/Steve Kornacki starting at 8am, but I have to wonder if there isn’t more money to be made by starting him at 9 or even 10 and pushing the MHP show back…