Remember once upon a time when TV execs though the Internet would be the death of broadcast television? And no, we don’t mean just because it allowed people to fly BT airwaves to acquire shows.
A few years ago, some TV executives thought that the growing use of the Internet would mean there was less time for people to devote to sitting in front of the tube. Well, it seems they were wrong and that instead of spending time doing one or the other, people are choosing to do both.
“The Internet is our friend, not our enemy,” Leslie Moonves, chief executive of the CBS Corporation, tells the New York Times. “People want to be attached to each other.”
This year, the ratings for live events like the Grammys, the Super Bowl and the Olympics have increased, as have the outreach into social networking areas of the Internet to encourage a sense of fan community. In short, the watercooler has moved from the watercooler to on-line discussions of shows, movies and events.
NBC recently broadcast the Golden Globe Awards live all across the United States to encourage the watercooler atmosphere to solid ratings. The company is considering a similar move for the Emmy awards later this year as well.
“People want to have something to share,” Alan Wurtzel, the head of research for NBC Universal, said from Vancouver. He said the effects of online conversations were “important for all big event programming, and also, honestly, for all of television going forward.”
If viewers cannot be in the same room, the next best thing is a chat room or something like it.
That’s what MTV found last fall during the Video Music Awards: the Twitterati were in a tizzy when Kanye West snatched a microphone from Taylor Swift in the middle of her acceptance speech. The show had an average of nine million viewers, its best performance in six years.
The Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, mounted a digital campaign to promote the awards show this year, signing up Facebook fans and monitoring Grammy-related Twitter messages.
Peter Anton, the academy’s vice president for digital media, said it was not a coincidence that the awards show notched a 35 percent gain over last year’s audience totals.
Media companies are starting to consider how to incorporate that water-cooler effect — and how to harness it for day-to-day TV shows, too. For the Olympics, NBC is promoting something called “You Be the Judge,” which lets viewers submit their own scores for figure skaters through a Web application and compare their scores to other viewers. The network’s Web site also features a gadget that tracks Twitter opinions about the Games.
Chloe Sladden, director of media partnerships for Twitter, said sites like Twitter let people feel plugged in to a real-time conversation.
“In the future, I can’t imagine a major event where the audience doesn’t become part of the story itself,” Ms. Sladden said.
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