Jeb Bush thinks Supergirl is hot and the trove of Sony emails revealed that they didn’t think this show would go very far. But viewers weren’t so torn. Amobee Brand Intelligence combed social media and found that engagement around the new show is all around positive.
There’s no question that Supergirl won the first head-to-head battle of DC Comics superhero shows. There were 108,378 tweets around Supergirl between 8 p.m. – midnight on Oct. 26 ET, with sentiment around those tweets being 28 percent positive, 57 percent neutral and 15 percent negative.
For contrast, in the same time period, there were 33,822 tweets around Gotham, with Twitter sentiment being 23 percent positive, 60 percent neutral, and 17 percent negative. Gotham is in its second season, but the idea that viewers aren’t interested in female superheroes isn’t found in this kind of data.
Jeb Bush took a lot of heat for calling Supergirl “hot” and on the day of the premiere; 9 percent of all digital content engagement around Supergirl was related to Jeb Bush. Fifteen percent of all digital content engagement on the day referred to her being “hot” while only 4 percent around her referred to ‘female empowerment’ and 2 percent of digital content engagement referring to her as a “role model.” While it will be interesting to see if it changes over time, Jeb Bush clearly isn’t the only person judging Supergirl by her looks, with people discussing actress Melissa Benoist’s looks more than the character’s actions.
But it wasn’t just her. On Oct. 26, 8 percent of the digital content engagement around Mehcad Brooks was about him being “hot.” Brooks plays possibly the buffest ever version of James “Jimmy” Olsen on the show.
With digital content engagement around new TV shows peaking the day after their debut episode airs, Supergirl is far and away the new show generating the most engagement online in for the fall season. There’s already been more than 3 times more digital content engagement around Supergirl on Oct. 27 than around any other new show the day after their pilot aired. Scream Queens generated 27 percent as much digital content engagement on Sept. 23 as Supergirl did on Oct. 27 while The Muppets generated 23 percent as much digital content engagement on Sept. 23 as Supergirl did on Oct. 27.