Watch ‘Axios On HBO’ Sunday, Ponder The TV[R]evolution

Every morning, Washington D.C. and much of the world wakes up to Axios AM — founder Mike Allen's top 10 stories of the day. Allen and Axios are key contributors to fact-based journalism from the frontlines of the White House. With the 'Axios on HBO' TV premiere last Sunday, which featured a sit down with President Trump, Axios’ reporting is now in our living room.In the coming weeks, we’ll be monitoring ‘Axios on HBO’ with various media measurement providers to see how tune-in and audience attention stacks up across the board — from live linear to streaming on-demand. For example, it will be interesting to look at Inscape data from 9 million+ TVs to understand where the audience is coming from pre-show and jumping to afterwards. (To get an idea of what we might surface with Inscape, TV[R]EV analyst Eleanor Semeraro has a great post on cross-over political viewing over at Broadcasting & Cable.)Another analytics company we'll be using is Canvs, the emotion measurement AI company, which can be a great early barometer for identifying if programming is resonating with viewers.In this week's TV[R]EV newsletter, analyst Jason Damata shared an early look with Canvs of the topical and emotional drivers of episode one: 

Axios' HBO launch brought out the hate. But before you mistake viewer commentary for hate for the show, a look deeper via Canvs AI emotion measurement reveals viewers were reacting to the plot lines viscerally. That's good news for HBO and Axios, people who feel also tell people and tune-in.

(Also worth noting per Canvs research, via Variety: Data Science Proves We Love to Hate-Watch TV.) Axios may be onto something. They may not. Either way, it’s a fascinating media brand evolution that the industry is watching closely as digital-born media publishers aim to package up and deliver video content over-the-top directly to coveted premium TV eyeballs. The second episode is this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET. Will you be tuning in?