I’ll take that as a comment: Twitter on TV
Embracing Twitter can offer audience interaction and instant insight into how your program is being received beyond just a ratings number. At EncoreLive, moderator Magdalena Roze and panellists Amanda Collinge, Steven Murphy and First Dog on the Moon (Andrew Marlton) waded into the Twitterstream.
An audience show-of-hands gave an instant response to the EncoreLive Conference of how many people were still not sold on Twitter and its capabilities, but those beyond the walls had no idea how many hands were raised – a quick tweet could have told the rest of the world.
In February, Channel Nine cancelled Ben Elton’s Live from Planet Earth after just three episodes – not just from low ratings, but from bad press on Twitter. “The audience let us know very quickly that they weren’t enjoying the program,” FremantleMedia publicist Steven Murphy admitted. By the second episode, “the sledging had become part of the audience member’s enjoyment. The public had spoken.”
Twitter has given an immediate platform for which the audience’s opinions can be heard by TV presenters, producers, media buyers, journalists and each other. The everyman and his dog has a voice. Andrew Marlton, better known as Crikey.com’s cartoonist First Dog on the Moon, can be heard by his 11,400 followers regularly badgering the TV while tweeting.
@firstdogonmoon: “Twitter is awesome. I spend a lot of time tweeting and yelling at the Telly. I tweet, I watch, I tweet again.”
The term is ‘double screening’. When a viewer not only watches television, but is also on their phone or computer ready to give a comment on their chosen social media network – and with a hashtag, the conversation is available for anyone to tune in to. What content producers and programmers are quickly learning is the way in which they utilise or embrace these many voices may make or break a show.
Amanda Collinge has been in the media industry for over 20 years as a journalist on Lateline, Dateline and Insight. For the past three years she has been the producer of ABC’s Monday night political panel show Q&A, with willing politicians and figures of authority in the live hot seat for the audience to interrogate them. In 2009, the inclusion of a Twitter scroll at the bottom of the screen added an extra element of democracy-in-action, with viewers quickly tweeting comments on the topic of discussion.
“What happened in 2009,” said Collinge, “was a Twitter community started to talk about Q&A anyway. Once we realised there was a phenomenon happening we started to advertise the hashtag on the program and we saw the comment of a couple of hundred during a broadcast jump to a thousand, so we thought, ‘why not try to put the comments across the screen’.”
“Straight away some of our eminent and experienced producers and colleagues said that it would fail, it will distract and drive the audience away – but in fact it has significantly increased our audience.”
On average, the hashtag ‘#QandA’ is used around 18,000 times during the hour program, from Australia, Asia and London. From there, around 50 are selected per episode Collinge told EncoreLive.
“The first tweet comes up as a (political) breakdown of the audience (as party-affiliate percentages) but we’ve already had about four tweets per second coming through our filter. I often describe it to people as panning for gold – there is a huge, rapid Twitter stream that you can see if you’re on #QandA.”
Collinge has two junior moderators to monitor and filter with guidelines ruling out racism, sexism and anything else offensive – but they must also be concise, timely and on topic, witty and entertaining and make a point without being too personal.
“It’s allowing viewers to be part of the process which, up until recently unless you were a journo, producer or gorgeous looking actress you wouldn’t get on telly, said Collinge. “People are getting on television through Twitter and that’s incredibly exciting.”
“It can become very funny, as the voice of the person at home or the unknown guest. Ideally we are trying to add another layer to the conversation, with tweets that add value, that are analytical and/or humorous.”
@firstdogonmoon: “I have a love hate relationship with Q&A, I’ve never had a tweet make it on to Q&A, perhaps because the obscene ones get filtered out – but I do love it. I just hate the things they say and it makes me want to get on the internet!”
“I actually find it fills in gaps,” said Collinge. “When a politician is being boring there’s stuff being said on Twitter that is much more funny and much more analytical and raising points that aren’t being raised.”
In fact, despite Collinge’s viewers saying they enjoy the odd non-politician episode, the Tony Abbott show during the election campaign of 2010 was the highest tweeting episode, followed by this year’s Julia Gillard episode – the John Howard episode was also huge. Collinge said, “Because so many young people tweet it has made politics exciting and engaging again.”
While Tweets can’t yet rival ratings, they do offer a myriad of research opportunities. Collinge told the EncoreLive conference, it’s an absolute mindfield that Q&A are yet to truly exploit. However, “what’s been fascinating for us is Twitter has brought to Q&A people who wouldn’t normally watch ABC television, who only watch commercial TV and we can tell that from what they’re tweeting – it’s bringing people back to TV even though it’s a new technology.”
For Collinge and Q&A, Twitter has added another medium to allow discussion and interaction between audience and panellists. It builds content for the show and has been a great success.
On the other hand, as Murphy already admitted, Ben Elton’s Live from Planet Earth didn’t quite get the same results. “Now I’m always on high alert. As a publicist I need to know what people are saying on Twitter so I can potentially be ready for what I’ll deal with in the media.”
@firstdogonmoon: “The show was still doomed but I reckon if Ben Elton had gotten on Twitter, his reputation might have survived a little better, to be on there engaging with people.”
Elsewhere however, Steven Murphy and FremantleMedia have had success. With a younger audience than Q&A, shows like Masterchef, X Factor and Australian Idol have the potential to be massive on Twitter. For FremantleMedia, Twitter is not only used to continue the storytelling of the program before and after the show has aired – but they use it to build hype as a publicity and marketing tool.
With X Factor, live tweeting gave followers behind-the-scenes gossip, backstage antics and commentary on performances that they otherwise wouldn’t be privy to on television. X Factor grew a community from 0-8000 in ten weeks, which “becomes a valuable database when you’re looking at series two, three and four when promoting auditions or news around the program. We know this audience is already engaged in the program and want to know more from us via their twitter account,” said Murphy.
Bringing further interaction, “Twitter was an integral part of our spin-off program Xtra Factor, where viewers could tweet in questions for our host to ask the contestants. It was the first time for us that Twitter became an interactive program component.” Yet again, it gave the audience a voice.
For Neighbours, Fremantle took a different tact, setting up Twitter accounts for a couple of the show’s younger characters to be updated by the actors who play them throughout the afternoon before the show went to air. They would interact with each other about the storyline, offering hints and teasers to drive the audience for that show.
@firstdogonmoon: “I tend not to follow hashtags but rather be part of the conversation and talk to people because it’s a genuine relationship and I’ve made genuine friends.”
“What we found was they had really strong numbers at the start and die-hard fans really embraced them, but then the numbers plateaued,” said Murphy. “What the Twitter audience is looking for is genuineness in its online activity. The audience is smart enough to know that it wasn’t actually the character talking to them. They could see it was a promo tool and that decreased their level of engagement.”
@firstdogonmoon: “People on Twitter are cluey and suspicious, so they’ll ignore you and block you or worse, tear you to pieces.”
“In hindsight,” said Murphy, “what we should have done was use an older character like Harold or Mrs Mangle to really have some fun with it, to be cheeky and really grow our audience.”
There is no one-size-fits-all social media strategy advised Murphy, as every program has a different audience with different needs. “The key things I’ve learnt is you need to accept the good with the bad when it comes to Twitter as that’s the nature of the beast. The good is when you build a community around the brand and you can play a part in the direction and messaging of that brand. The bad is when you cannot influence the conversation around your brand and it’s not what you want to hear.”
However, with that old adage of ‘any publicity is good publicity,’ Murphy said, “The bottom line in 2011 is there’s nothing worse than not being talked about.”
Primarily what should be remembered is that Twitter isn’t a new screen competing with TV for eyeballs, but rather bringing people back to TV, as Collinge pointed out. And not only is the audience still watching TV, but their experience is live and interactive so their power as an audience is stronger. Best of all, they’re eager to share your stories beyond the small screen.
@firstdogonmoon: “This is the new huddling around the radio but our family is everyone who we mutually follow rather than the family who are in the house… unless they’re in another room tweeting at the same time.”
EncoreLive’s #TVTwitter or ‘I’ll take that as a comment’ was curated by Kym Druitt at Eckfactor, moderated by Magdalena Roze (Meteorologist/Journalist – Weather Channel) with panellists; Amanda Collinge (Series Producer – Q&A), First Dog on the Moon’s Andrew Marlton Cartoonist – Crikey.com), Stephen Murphy (Communications Manager – FremantleMedia Enterprises).
