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Nine in social media storm over Olympics coverage

Nine: too heavy on swimming coverage?

Nine’s coverage of the Olympics is close to receiving a higher volume of criticism than online conversation about the games themselves.

One comment, left on the network’s Facebook page, has gained more than double the number of likes as the brand’s own Facebook page. The comment has been liked by 101,827 people and commented on by 4,500 at time of writing.

The comment reads:

Dear Channel 9 any chance you could possibly re think your approach to covering London 2012.
Maybe some volleyball, badminton, table tennis, archery etc in prime times instead of swimming, repeats of swimming, interviews of swimming, analysis of swimming, previews of swimming!
Give the other sports some exposure and recognition for what they have achieved and what they have accomplished!
Kind regards, the rest of Australia!

The Olympic opening ceremony, screened on Nine, created a huge volume of conversation on Twitter and Facebook, with over 116,000 mentions by Australians on Twitter.

Online sentiment was largely positive to begin with, but the mood has turned over the past few days with complaints about the coverage starting to eclipse conversation about the event itself.

Number of Olympic tweets from Australia (click to enlarge)

Channel 9The event is becoming one of the most discussed online since social media became mainstream.

On Saturday, the conversation on Twitter peaked at 9am EST with 14,309 mentions over an hour, reflecting OzTam’s viewer figures.

Discussion centred around three main topic areas: Australia, the Australian athletes and the Queen.

There were 13,727 mentions of the Queen, discussing her cameo with Daniel Craig as James Bond, her entrance via parachute and the official opening of the ceremony. Conversation was also fuelled in part by the satirical Twitter account @Queen_UK:

Queen meme

A number of memes also emerged, monikered “Queen Meme.”

Queen Meme

The second most discussed aspect of the Olympic opening ceremony was Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean Chariots of Fire sketch, which generated 4,633 mentions.

There were 12,274 mentions of Australia relating to the Olympics.

Conversations around the Australian Olympic squad reached 5,091. The sentiment was generally positive.

Source: Social@Ogilvy, data sourced from Salesforce Radian 6.

 

 

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