#FeelTheBern: Does Social Media Passion Translate Into More Votes… Or Higher Ratings.
On this week’s cold open on Saturday Night Live, comedian Larry David, playing his doppelganger Bernie Sanders “apologized” to Facebook users for his supporters zealotry.
The line drew a big laugh, but social media behavior during the election brings up an interesting issue for the television industry: how much does social, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram, reflect the larger mood, or is it just an indicator of how much passion there is for a particular show or candidate.
Pro-Sanders hashtags like #HistoryByHillary and #WhichHillary may be dominating the social networks along with anti-Trump memes like #Drumpf, but tonight we’ll learn how much that really matters in terms of who is getting votes.
Voters and TV viewers are not identical universes, but they do have a lot in common: in both spheres there seems to be a “silent majority”: people who don’t feel the need to share their opinion with the public at large. They are drowned out by the more passionate voices, however, and in both instances (politics and television) those voices wind up dominating the conversation and can create the impression that everyone is having the same discussion and holding the same opinion.
Numbers Matters
The big difference between politics and television however is that in politics, numbers matter. It doesn’t matter that Bernie Sanders has the most passionate social media supporters if at the end of the day he doesn’t have the most votes.
In television, that equation has been shifting: whereas ratings were once the only thing that mattered, the industry has shifted its take and now recognizes the advantage of having a smaller, more passionate audience.
The value of those passionate audiences lies in a world where everything is time-shifted and on-demand. So that a passionate audience can be counted on to do things that bring increased profits to the shows creators, like subscribe to a streaming service that carries their favorite show, patronize advertisers who support the show, support its stars in future endeavors and so on.
And in the current environment, that’s more valuable than ratings.
A Higher Threshold
Television fans are at some level more zealous than political supporters. Politics is important. It, you know, matters. People go to war over differing political opinions. So while expressing political opinions may be controversial, it’s far from frivolous. TV on the other hand…
It’s one thing to comment on a show when it’s live, especially an unscripted show like the Emmys or the Oscars. Similarly, it’s okay to root for a sports team, especially while the game is on.
But being an active social media advocate for a series takes a special kind of passion. (And by “active” we mean more than just the occasional retweet or liking of a friend’s Instagram photo.) That’s what makes those passionate fans so valuable to TV networks. Because for many of them, their identity is tied up with their favorite shows. And like political supporters, they will campaign to get more people to start watching what they inevitably feel is the “best show on TV.”
Tonight we’ll get to see whether passion translates into votes. In television, we know it doesn’t always translate into ratings. Will politics prove to be any different?
