We just crashed Twitter,” Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres crowed after sending out her now famous celebrity-laden selfie during ABC’s live Academy Awards telecast last month. “We got an email from Twitter, and we crashed and broke Twitter. We have made history. See, Meryl, what we did? You and I? It’s amazing, we really just made history. It’s fantastic.”
There is nothing like live TV — millions of people sharing a moment, sometimes comic, sometimes shocking, sometimes tragic and sometimes simply fun. Such moments touch off conversations that roll through living rooms onto social media and into the office the next day.
The National Football League — all live — is the hottest (and costliest) programming in TV these days and will be regularly broadcast three nights a week this fall. Live awards shows like the Academy Awards are proliferating as networks try to capitalize on their particular blend of glamour and competitive drama. The network’s big-budget talent shows continue to rely on live to build tension for participants and viewers.
And as TV stations add newscasts, they are increasing the live content within those newscasts. Some are even experimenting with live local entertainment.
“There’s a feeling that live television is a way to stave off the wolf at the door — new media,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Pop Culture at Syracuse University.
“In the near future, we’ll see more of this. People have it in their head that live TV is the way old-school television will remain relevant. Until evidence proves that that’s not true, more and more people will try it.”
Live productions like NBC’s Sound of Music Live give programs an added dose of excitement and immediacy.
“That was something different,” says Darcy Bowe, VP-director of video at Starcom USA. “There’s something to be said for watching a show for three hours for just one night. You can watch it and feel like you’re part of the water cooler buzz without having to make a long commitment to a show.”
Live TV has also proven to be a reliable antidote against the DVRs and commercial zapping and it dovetails perfectly with America’s growing fascination with social media to boost ratings.Heavily reliant on advertising, broadcasters have long been wary of DVRs. More than 47% of TV homes now have a DVR and 23% have more than one, according to Leichtman Research Group.
“For movies and retailers, time-shifting can be a concern,” says Starcom’s Bowe. “That is why live TV is interesting to a lot of TV advertisers. Advertisers are demanding immediacy. Amassing an audience on a particular night is important.”
Combating ad skipping empowered by the DVR is a bigger issue for TV stations than it is for network TV.
Advertisers typically buy local TV using Nielsen’s live-only or live-plus-same-day program ratings. Network TV is bought on C3 commercial ratings, which includes live viewing and three days of DVR playback. That means local TV advertisers pay for viewers who fast-forward through their commercials.
“One of the things about news is that, to some extent, it’s DVR-proof,” says Emily Barr, president-CEO of Post-Newsweek Stations.
Live TV and social media were made for each other. In 2013, 36 million people in the United States sent 990 million Tweets about TV shows they were watching live, according to Nielsen SocialGuide. Moreover, 84% of people who have smartphones or computer tablets use those devices while watching TV.
DeGeneres’s Oscar tweet really did make history. Some three million DeGeneres followers retweeted the selfie, setting a new record and cementing Twitter’s place as a TV enhancer.
But week in and week out, it’s live sports that light up social media. During the Super Bowl in February, Twitter was on fire. The game and its commercials generated some 1.8 billion tweets that were seen by 15.3 million Twitter users. The esurance spot prompted the most Twitter chatter, with 1.2 million Twitter users posting nearly 1.9 million messages about it.
“Sports shows and awards shows tend to be watched live, which is very appealing to advertisers,” says Brad Adgate, SVP of research at Horizon Media. “But social media is a part of this [live TV] trend, too. People want to be part of the conversation. If a show is live, more often than not, people will be online chatting about it.”