The below post is part of our 2014 Social TV Year-in-Review guest post series and is written by Tumblr Head of Media Sima Sistani.
TV is not social.
When watching ‘The Good Wife’ I require complete silence.
My husband enters the room: “Eli is the best part of this show.”
Me: “SHHHHHHH!!!” as I simultaneously rewind to the moment he dared to speak up.
I won’t even eat chips during my favorite shows because the crunching interferes. For the longest time I believed myself to be outside the norm, or just old; the kids today are using a second screen to talk about their shows! Since 2010 I have been championing that notion with real conviction. I use a second screen, but only when it’s a show I don’t really care about – probably something my husband is forcing me to sit through – and that second screen is devoted mostly to emails unless I happen to be mocking whatever I’m watching. Whereas, if it’s a show I love, there is no way I’m diverting my attention.
I was not alone, and with anecdotal evidence building up, I started to chip away at my own theories about second screen behavior. Bolstered by several academic and research reports, I realized that I am in the majority (thankfully I’m not just old, yet). My first clue should have been that if there were someone game for a real time social TV conversation, it would be me! I’m an early adopter, good at multi-tasking, and I really love TV. And there is the rub – TV is still a lean back experience for true fans of the medium.
But what of the digital water cooler you say? Oh, it’s alive and well, but for scripted television programming (with the caveat of sports and award shows which have lots of downtime), the most meaningful conversations are happening outside of the narrow broadcast window. Fans pay attention to their show while watching it, and then extoll its virtues afterward. According to Pulsar, 61% of the engagement happens outside the broadcast window. Not to mention, I’m rarely watching my shows in real time with other fans because, like a growing number of viewers, I’m watching in a time-shifted setting – whenever and wherever is convenient for me.
I just finished watching an episode of ‘The Mindy Project.’ This show gets me every time – I love it – I’m laughing out loud on the plane, and everyone is staring at me. I post to Twitter, “The Mindy Project. LOL on the plane. #awkward.” I search ‘The Mindy Project’ hashtags and see a bunch of old posts exclaiming: “Watching,” “Bwahah,” or “OMG.” I am unenthused (is it even referring to the same episode?) as I’m pretty sure my followers will be similarly unimpressed by my insular and out of context status update.
I then search ‘The Mindy Project’ on Tumblr and I am instantly gratified with rich media from the show as well as derivative content – episode recaps, fashion stills, fan art, and of course GIFs, so many GIFs. Now I’m really LOL! I reblog immediately that one moment that slayed me from the episode I just watched and declare, “No she didn’t! Mindy be my BFF.” Responses from other fans slowly roll in and engagement is sustained for days. A conversation ensues in the form of a reblog thread about who is shipping “Dindy” and how Peter Prentice (actor Adam Pally) was the best addition to the ensemble. I don’t know most of my followers because on Tumblr you follow passions and not just friends. So there is reblog action from other folks who love TV, people who like comedy, and some who just like a good ol’ GIF to recontextualize for their own narrative. The majority of the reblogs don’t come from people who follow me. They found my post three, four, and even five generations removed (I was the second generation). In fact, 60% of all Tumblr reblogs happen downstream from a user’s follower count. Even as a non-creator, I am able to take part in the fandom, and contribute to the conversation around ‘The Mindy Project’ by curating the content posted by creators. Every day, 90 million pieces of content are posted to Tumblr and a lot of those posts are reblogs by curators like me.
This is social TV: a community of fans empowered with content, spreading the word.
In a TV-on-demand consumption paradigm, the water cooler has to be equally flexible. On Tumblr, the content is evergreen and rich. A friend just recommended ‘Damages’ to me. The show isn’t on-air anymore so I’m going to stream it on Netflix and tune-in to Tumblr afterward.