Consumer Trends in the Television Industry: Delighting and Frustrating Viewers

In this blog post, we zoom in on the main consumer trends in the television industry.

Sentiment around the television industry

Television is one of the most positively discussed industries in our study.

It makes sense – if we don’t like a show, we simply don’t watch it. If we do like a show, maybe we’re more likely to discuss it online with fellow fans.

But when viewers aren’t treated to returning seasons of their favorite shows, things get nasty.

Cancelling a show is met with more backlash than it might have been before the social web. Now people are able to club together around an interest, discussing the characters and their favorite moments. Just check out the Game of Thrones subreddit if you want to see how intense these communities can get. So when a show gets cancelled, even if viewership is waning, you’re still going to piss of those loyal fans and their reaction is going to be loud.

Here’s what negative mentions looked like around the networks we studied, which included Discovery, The Food Network, Fox, Netflix, BBC One and Channel 4.

The cancellation of shows like Shadow Hunters and Lucifer got a significant amount of conversation, with viewers lobbying for them to return.

And there’s proof that these campaigns work – just look at what happened with Brooklyn 99.

Demographics

Compared to the average person on Twitter, people discussing television tend to be female, in creative occupations, and have an interest in music (alongside television, of course).

This demographic will obviously change show-to-show, but it’s interesting to see that women are more vocal than men when it comes to television overall.

Delving deeper into audiences around specific TV shows can help unearth further nuances, especially using a tool like Brandwatch Audiences where new features include pulling out conversation topics that are especially prevalent within a particular group.