TVloop Blog

Back in October, I wrote about how the Addicted to Twilight community on Facebook was the fastest growing application within the TVLoop network.  Since then, aside from encouraging teenagers to bite people, the movie became one of the top 20 openings of all time in November, while the DVD sold over 3 million units on it’s first day.  From a TVLoop perspective, the Twilight community has ballooned to over 372K users - a 218% increase since I wrote the post in October.

To celebrate the launch of the Twilight DVD on March 20, we wanted to see just how big of a fan community we have.  To do that, we ran a “Biggest Twilight Fan” contest and encouraged Twilight users to upload their photos proving why they were in fact the biggest fan out there.  In a week, over 440 entries ranging from photos of girls kissing posters to tatoos to interesting costumes.  But after over 2200 votes were cast, the winner was the photo below…and yes that’s a real tatoo of Edward Cullen’s family crest.  I have no idea what that means since I’m not really in the target market, but I’m told he’s kind of important to the Twilight storyline.  For the sake of the winner, I hope he continues to be important for the next 50 years or so.

For the most part, Lost fans are resilient.  They…or rather, we…have taken a lot over the last 4 plus years.  We’ve gone along with the polar bears, black smoke, walking dead, and now even time travel.  But we’re starting to get a bit ancy and we’re ready for some answers.  Could that be what’s causing the issues with Lost ratings recently?

According to TV By the Numbers, Lost posted a new series low and dipped below 9 million viewers for the first time all year.  The Addicted to Lost community on Facebook has also had some challenges this TV season.  After ramping up to almost 140,000 monthly active users for the season 5 premiere, the community has been slowly losing users everyday and has settled in around 80,000 monthly actives.

That’s not quite what we had in mind considering Season 5 was highly anticipated since it seemed that we were finally starting to get some answers. We still have almost 600,000 Lost fans in the community and add around 500 every day.  But something is definitely keeping Lost viewers from watching new episodes and Lost fans from coming back to the community.

So maybe the lack of answers is finally getting to people.  Thank goodness for Televisionary which provides a fantastic Lost recap each week to help makes sense of everything.  It’s highly recommended if you’re a fan.

NBC is getting its proverbial clock cleaned by FOX, CBS, and ABC when it comes to primetime average viewership.  According to the latest Nielsen ratings, NBC average viewers fell below 6 million for the week ending March 22.  At 5.74 million, that doesn’t compare very favorably to leader of the pack CBS at 11.5 million, second place FOX at 10.3 million, and third place ABC at 9.2 million.

The problem is especially noticeable in the 18-34 demo where NBC fell below Spanish-language channel Univision in average primetime viewership for the week. Yes, you read that right.  Univision soundly surpassed NBC in a highly coveted demo by almost 200K average viewers last week.  That is not a good position for the peacock network to be in with FOX and CBS showing no signs of giving up their iron grip atop the rankings.

The big problem right now is that NBC doesn’t appear to have an answer for the ratings disaster that is their Spring season.  I’m not sure adding 5 hours of Leno to primetime every week really counts.  And with Heroes continuing to slip every week with lower and lower ratings, the only real wins for the network are Law and Order SVU, The Biggest Loser, and The Office.  All other shows continue to struggle and are bringing overall ratings for the network down with it.  Only The Office and Law and Order SVU made it on to the Top 20 list for last week.  The list is dominated by Fox and ABC at the top and CBS through the middle.

From a TVLoop perspective, we’ve definitely seen a sharp drop-off in Heroes over the last several months.  This chart would seem to mirror the general malaise that has overtaken Heroes fans for most of this season.  If this continues, it will be interesting to see how long NBC sticks with it’s current lineup of shows.

The Live Feed is reporting that there’s a chance that Star Trek could be returning to TV at some point in the near future.  The speculations stems from a couple of interesting bullet points

• The Star Trek movie releasing in May is filled with twenty-somethings
• CBS owns the TV rights to Star Trek
• CBS owns the CW - home of Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, and other favorites of the under-25 set
• Heroes writer, Bryan Fuller, has said he wants to bring Star Trek back to TV and is talking to Star Trek movie director, JJ Abrams about the possibility.  Abrams knows a think or two about creating hit shows - Lost, Fringe, etc.

So all of those things is leading to some theories about a Gossip Girl of sorts in space with a new iteration of Star Trek.  Personally, I haven’t watched any Star Trek since The Next Generation went off the air many moons ago.  And I can’t say that I would be too interested in seeing a Chuck Bass-like character sporting his red pants and annoying smirk on a Federation spaceship.  But I’m obviously not the target market and you can’t ignore the fact that everything the CW and JJ Abrams touches these days is pure gold.  So there could be something to the rumors.

From a TVLoop perspective, a new Star Trek would likely be very successful given the demographics of Facebook and social networks in general.  CW shows have traditionally done very well:

• Gossip Girl - 396K users
• One Tree Hill - 455K users
• Supernatural - 101K users

Combine that with the fact that space-oriented shows have also done very well, and a combination of the two could be very interesting.

• Star Trek - 36K users
• Stargate - 41K users
• Battlestar Gallactica - 43K users

According to the consultants and researchers at The Diffusion Group, 76% of adult broadband consumers are interested in having a widget toolbar on their primary TV - 28% say it would be extremely valuable.  TDG goes on to compare widgets on TV to mobile apps and the impact they’ve had on hardware development by Apple, Blackberry, etc.

I’m still not sure I’m a huge believer in the “widgets and apps for TV” phenomenon, but as Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee puts it:

Whether you want them or not, widgets are on their way. Yahoo and Intel are ramping up their TV platform to enable access to weather, stocks and news information on the ole TV, and Verizon recently showed a glimpse of what Twitter and Facebook will look like on its FiOS TV service.

According to an informal pool we did in the TVLoop community, roughly half of our users only want to watch TV when they’re watching their favorite show.  In other words, they don’t want to be bothered by widgets, applications, and social features.  They simply want to watch what’s on.  There are obviously some differences in research methodology as TDG’s is much more scientific and statistically significant.  That said, I would love to see the demographics of the respondents as I’m a bit surprised that 76% of broadband adults know what a widget is.  My parents fit into that category and definitely wouldn’t have a clue as to what you were talking about and I guarantee my Dad has no interest in messing up his 50″ plasma with a widget toolbar.

This is obviously not the last time we’ll hear about widgets on TV.  In fact, we’ll likely strongly consider adapting the TVLoop apps to fit the Yahoo TV platform that has been talked about.  I remain on the “don’t see it” side of the room and look forward to being proven wrong.