SocialTV take-up by UK broadcasters is behind Europe in some respects, but ITV dominates the British market with the most engaging entertainment formats. Carl Richter analyses the week's Twitter figures.
On Saturday night, France's most successful socialTV event of the year ("The NRJ Music Awards") drew a record-breaking 2.3million in-show Tweets for TF1, peaking at 17,000 Tweets per minute. This, on the heels of the previous week's "Miss France" contest, also on TF1, which polled 1.1million in-show Tweets from an audience of 8.2million TV viewers.
The state of French socialTV is incredibly healthy. And despite deep recession across Southern Europe, Spanish and Italian socialTV numbers are also doing well. But, how do the UK's socialTV statistics compare?
Figures from the past 7 days are dominated by ITV's "The X Factor", which leads the week by a staggering 375,000 Tweets from its nearest rival ("I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here", also on ITV).
Taking both "X Factor" and "I'm A Celebrity" episodes together, they outperform all nearest rivals across the week put together, with Saturday night's "X Factor" almost reaching TF1's peak of 17,000 Tweets per minute.
What is most interesting, looking at these figures, is the distance between the top- and nearest-performing shows, which is considerable, both in numbers and by channel.
ITV clearly leads the way, with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-performing shows, with Channel 4 managing 4th ("Made In Chelsea") and 5th ("Home Alone", the first non-format).
After sports show "Match of The Day", the BBC's best-performing format is "Strictly Come Dancing", directly opposite ITV's "X Factor", but managing only 1/25th of the Tweets.
While (90-minute) films, (half-hour) soaps, sports and live debate shows are fairly well-represented further down the leader board, with steady if modest socialTV engagement, the UK's weekly figures demonstrate that it is primetime format entertainment which dominates.
Will ITV continue to lead the way in 2014, or can the other channels capitalise on their primetime format investments by converting them into more socially-engaging experiences?
If socialTV was an Olympic event, it would perhaps be the 10,000m, where ITV has an astonishing lead. But we all know the pacemaker doesn't always eventually win the race.
With the right primetime entertainment formats - those essentially which put social media at their heart, rather than simply bolting on Twitter feeds and Facebook/Smartphone apps as afterthoughts - the distance can be closed by ITV's competitors.
But to do this effectively on Twitter means Tweets are going to have to mean something. The action is still on TV, and a Twitter conversation is great, but as both TF1 and ITV know, Twitter participation is better.
[The remaining graphics follow: source SecondSync]
