Just over ten years ago, advertisers and networks craved the hottest television shows. Specifically, those that were capable of generating "water cooler" discussions the next morning. Times have truly changed as the digital era of communication has outdated water cooler conversations and brought about real time discussions while shows are airing. The notion of passive viewing is now a time of the past as viewers are now able to voice their opinions and comment on their favorite network shows.
In a recent study comparing The Walking Dead and True Blood, researchers wanted to find out which show was better according to the numbers produced by social media chatter. The Walking Dead uses social media as an integral part of their promotional efforts. It looks like marketers have hit the nail on the head as the total activity on combined social media platforms totals more than 6 million. The average number of social comments per episode is 344,000. That ranks them as the second highest social show on TV.
True Blood settles in with a total activity of over 2.3 million with an average of 90,000 comments per episode. Although they are in 9th place in the poll for most social shows, the impending premier of season six is sure to ignite a lot of talk. As of 2010, True Blood has 11 million followers on Facebook and 540,000 Twitter fans. The Walking Dead has them beat here too with 16 million Facebook fans and 1.2 million Twitter followers respectively.
One thing that True Blood has a slight advantage on is the number of followers that fan favorites have on Twitter. It is safe to say that the cast of True Blood has some fangtastic looking characters. Joe Mangianello and Kristen Bauer steam up the screen with their mouth watering good looks and their cumulative total of almost 350,000 Twitter followers would have to agree.
At the end of the day, The Walking Dead has True Blood beat on the social media performance. The Walking Dead may have the upper hand in generating social media hype, but I would put a pack of werewolves and blood thirsty vampires up against zombies any day of the week!