Something happened to The O’Reilly Factor on Friday.  Normally a sleeper on Cable News Twitter, the Factor dominated Twitter, with nearly 5K mentions during its broadcast, and over 26K throughout the day.  What happened? Eric Bolling happened, guest hosting the show and bringing his vocal fans along with him.

It was no contest: the next two shows (The Kelly File and All In w/ Chris Hayes) combined had less mentions than Bolling’s Factor:

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To put these results in context, for the rest of the week The O’Reilly Factor averaged about 650 mentions during the 8pm hour and 2400 mentions in the day overall.  Bolling brought that up about 7.5x during the show and over 10x throughout the day.

Speaking of the daily totals, the following chart gives an insight in how shows get talked about during the entire day:

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Not only did the show dominate the day, but Eric Bolling’s hashtag, #WakeUpAmerica, was the most used hashtag or word on Cable News Twitter.

I’m always surprised that team Bill O’Reilly doesn’t invest more effort in social media.  Eric Bolling showed that when the (acting) host of the most popular show on Cable News puts his mind to it, he can drive the conversation on social media.

Raw data: 2015-03-06-ShowStats.csv

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It was a fairly typical Thursday, with Hannity having the best day overall and The Kelly File having the best hour.  It was also a bit atypical, with Morning Joe turning in a very respectable second place showing during his 7 am hour!

Here’s the full top 30:

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Raw data: 2015-03-05-ShowStats.csv

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