Social Network Television
With all the on going advances in technology it’s really no surprise that the television landscape is evolving. With all of the prominence of social networks in todays day and age, television networks are taking notice and are changing with the times into being more social network centric.
As technology evolves we are seeing a large turn in the way we are watching our favorite programming. With the developments currently going on in the digital age, television networks are having a hard time gaining the viewership they at some point were able to acquire easily.
The result of the drastic change in television networks viewership could be the rise of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. These services are being watched more on the regular basis because its made much more convenient for the everyday person. Often times people opt to catch a new episode on a streaming service over watching the program the same night it premieres, in turn hurting the network in terms of ratings.
Vulture reported that this year, returning shows on the bigger networks such as ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW have suffered a rating loss of around 25 percent or larger. Shows like the hit music series “Empire” are drawing half as many views as it did during the start of its run. While other hard hitting shows such as “Scandal”, has had its ratings dropped 34 percent this past season.
With the loss of all this viewership of course comes a loss of revenue from the networks advertisers, who generally are the ones who are paying to keep these networks running. So of course that’s where television networks have been looking for alternatives and have started to use social networks to their advantage.
The change in the way television is being watched is hurting television networks in one way, but helping them in another. Thanks specifically to social networks or “Social TV”, we are seeing a large sharing of communication and information of our favorite shows. This in the long run is very beneficial to the shows, and networks as it engages their audiences in a way that allows for more viewership to pour in from just word of mouth, which some describe as free publicity.
More shows are being talked about now on Twitter and Instagram than two or three years ago. Television networks are using all sorts of techniques to guarantee a raise in their viewership. We are often seeing stars of popular series live tweet during the episodes premiere with fans to ensure that the targeted audience are well aware to tune into the series, and interact with the star as reward.
Television networks weekly calculate their audience’s responses to their programming. The networks run analytics of all sorts during live broadcasts and afterwards, to measure their content and how well its doing with each intended demographic.
It was recorded that in 2015, 60% of consumers had used their smartphones or other electronics while watching television to be vocal about what they were watching on social media. It was also recorded that 24 million Twitter users sent out more than 800 million tweets regarding different television topics.
Social media has found a way to connect itself in ways that was not possible before.
Through social media outlets such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, television company’s can also now appeal to a larger demographic, and conduct promotional work at a larger level. Television companies are using these social media outlets to market their television series, as well as their stars in a much cheaper, yet larger and effective scale.
Networks such as The CW, Fox and ABC use these social media platforms to garner more interests in their peak shows like “Riverdale”, “How to Get Away With Murder”, and “Empire”. The television company offers them a hefty social network budget and banners are created and promotional ads are placed all over networks such as Instagram, Youtube and Facebook to promote the shows and garner more interest in them, creating more hype and helping the ratings.
According to an Adweek Report, 70% of markets in 2015 increased their spending on social media advertising, and the percentage has only rose in the past two years. In 2016, marketers spend $189 billion on advertisements in the states alone, representing 31.9% in the global market.
Still, one might ask themselves, what can social network television be defined as, and what might the future hold for this fairly new concept?
Well social network television can be easily put as any sort of media content that it’s publicly shared onto a social platform and given promotion as just that. From the largest television station, to the more independently own Youtube series, it can all be loosely defined as social network television.
The future of social network television looks very bright. We currently have highly popular shows such as Scandal that do great on their own and on their network, but with the inclusion of social networking, entire spin offs could be based around any character and presented online.
Social network television can give a platform to the characters of a series, creating a web series based around them that would not fit into the original one hour format on actual network television.
This of course creates great opportunities for the networks as well as the show creators as it would generate more revenue for the show, and of course bring in more viewership because of the added social network publicity.
While its still a very new concept, social network television is slowly proving to be the television of the future, and with more opportunities rising for television networks to make money off these opportunities, we are going to continue to see the rise in social network television.