If a television show is popular, people are most likely tweeting about it. Partnering with Twitter, Nielsen Social, which measures social TV engagement, presented its latest numbers for the 2014-15 TV season (September 1, 2014 to May 24, 2015). Here’s what viewers were tweeting about.
The top-tweeted programming overall (as well as the most tweeted-about sports event) was Super Bowl XLIX, while the top special event was the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. Three TV series, Saturday Night Live, The Walking Dead, and Empire, snagged the top series episode, top series premiere, and most-tweeted series episode, respectively.
While AMC’s The Walking Dead had the highest average Twitter viewers per episode (4.31 million viewers), Fox’s Empire took Twitter by storm. The show’s debut season was only the fifth most-viewed show by average audience (2.64 million viewers), but the series averaged 627,000 tweets per episode in its debut season, beating The Walking Dead in that category. Empire‘s two-part season finale generated 2.4 million tweets. The final season of Parks and Recreation made the list as well, showing that TV shows can be popular out of the gate or even at the end of their run.
Music was the hottest topic on Twitter when it came to specials. Six music-related specials made the top-ten in 2014-15. The Grammy Awards ranked first in total viewers (13.3 million viewers), and even more people tweeted about it (13.4 million). The 2014 American Music Awards, the 2015 Billboard Music Awards, the 48th Annual Country Music Association Awards, the IHeartRadio Music Awards, and the BET Hip Hop Awards 2014 also made the top-ten. The Oscars and the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards, as well as Bruce Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s 20/20 and Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, rounded out the top spots.
In sports, football was in full domination, mainly because the season falls entirely inside a typical TV season. Eight football events were in the top-ten, and six in particular were professional National Football League events. Super Bowl XLIX (16.13 million viewers, 25.1 million tweets) nabbed the top spot. College football managed to grab two spots, with the 2015 NCAA championship game between Ohio State and Oregon, and the Rose Bowl between Florida State and Oregon in the top ten. The only non-football events to make the list were the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, and the NCAA basketball championship between Duke and Wisconsin.
