Update: Fueled by Whitney Houston’s death, last night’s Grammy Awards attracted 39 million viewers — the most since 1984, according to Nielsen. And it set an all-time social TV record with 13 million social comments, according to Bluefin Labs. Last week, the Super Bowl hit a record-breaking 12.2 million comments, but the record didn’t stand for long.
According to data from Trendrr, the Grammys fell just short of the Super Bowl in social TV numbers — but not by far. Trendrr’s “activity score” was 17,122,439, compared to the Super Bowl’s 17,487,241.
Meanwhile, CBS says it measured 1 million+ viewers of the Grammy Live experience over three days across CBS.com, Grammy.com and the Grammy Live iPad/iPhone app. This includes the red carpet and behind-the-scenes cameras during the show.
And TiVo sent us some data on how its subscribers responded. Here are the top 5 TiVo’d moments:
1. Rihanna and Coldplay’s performance of “We Found Love” and “Princess of China” at 8:57 p.m.
2. Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson’s duet of “Don’t You Wanna Stay” at 8:38 p.m.
3. Adele winning the first award of the night: Best Pop Solo Performance for “Someone Like You” at 8:24 p.m.
4. Adele’s captivating performance of “Rolling in the Deep” at 10:06 p.m.
5. The touching Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” tribute by Jennifer Hudson at 10:43 p.m.
So how did the Grammys outpace the biggest TV event of the year, despite the tape-delay for the West Coast? We’re still waiting for more data, but clearly Whitney Houston was on the minds of many. And I’ll hypothesize that a higher percentage of viewers participated because most people watched alone or with one other, as opposed to the group-viewing approach to the Super Bowl.
Here’s Bluefin’s infographic for the night:
