Social TV is often narrowly defined by real-time tweets and stunts. While both are extremely important parts of social TV, don’t forget that entire TV lifecycle has been changed because of the social web. Networked Insights has released a new “Social TV Survival Guide” that explains the different parts of the life cycle very clearly. You can download it here.
The most undefined components of this lifecycle are the ideation and preproduction parts of this cycle. “Television can often be derivative, mimicking successful formats from other shows, networks or even countries,” the report describes about the ideation process. With social TV, show creators can use information from the social web to come up with ideas. One trend we might see emerge as a result of this is the evolution of the “spinoff” series. After Jersey Shore’s success everyone new a spinoff would eventually come, and it did. The next Snooki & JWoww might be completely determined from understanding and studying popular subreddits and TV Tumblrs.
Pre-Production and Planning is even more interesting. The survival guide states that “Producers and networks can mitigate much of the uncertainty associated with choices made in concepting, casting and writing.” One great example of this is YouNow, one of the platforms trying to change reality-TV. Casting experts could validate their gut feeling by launching casting sessions on YouNow, Google+ Hangouts, or Spreecasts to see what their future viewers think.
What parts of the TV lifecycle do you think are being affected the most by social TV? The least?