The past year has seen a huge increase in a new field of television media surveillance called social shows ratings. Social show ratings are a rating system of not necessarily the best shows on television but the most talked about on social media sites, as a result many of the early fronts running shows that were rated highly on the system are mostly those that target the age group most likely to be proverbially joined-at-the-hip to online social networks. The system pioneered by tvguide.com in the united states and TVgenius in Britain are calculated by performing check in on episodes, monitoring “like” levels and calculating comments traffic on all major social networks. This gives analysts a clearer picture of not only what shows are more popular and social but also on how viewers interact with the shows they watch, with a growing trend of tweeting or posting while watching a particular show.


Tvguide.com Top 10 most social shows of the 2010-2011 TV season                                                                                     TVgenius top 10 most social shows for July 2011

10. Law and order: special victims  unit                                       10. Popstar to operastar

9. Smallville                                                                                9. Coronation Street

8.Castle                                                                                     8. Question time

7.Bones                                                                                     7. Emmerdale

6.Fringe                                                                                     6. Britain’s got talent

5.House                                                                                     5. Angry boys

4.Glee                                                                                       4. Geordie shore

3. Criminal Minds                                                                       3. The apprentice

2. American idol                                                                         2. Doctor who

1. NCIS                                                                                     1. Family guy

 

All of this begs the question of what a similar list for South Africa would consist of. Certainly more and more citizens are becoming social network savvy and much of this audience already spend on average more than 3 hours a day watching TV. However there is a glaring flaw in that South Africa at present does not have anywhere near a system able to track and research data needed for such a sophisticated rating system. The last rating statistics released to the press is already a couple of years old and contains many programs that have either ended or since been cancelled. So what shows do you think would be on the list. Some facts are clear and may provide us with some direction. Much of the population do not have access to satellite television: and so free to air shows would be more popular, south Africans love wrestling: why else would ETV spend most of our breathing time feeding us made up male Soapies, South Africans love soapies: The most watched TV show in south Africa, according to AMR’S last rating release, was generations and the bet is that they are  not far from there even now and finally South Africans love American shows: whether in their original form or in a local carbon copy the Americans rule us.  

So what do you think would be in south Africa’s top 10 social television shows?, Have you ever tweeted or posted during a show?, What’s your experience of it?, How has “being social” bettered your watching experience?

Let us know in the comments section below and we’ll compile a list of our own.