The biggest TV shows on social media for 2016 have just been announced. Pretty Little Liars, Walking Dead, and Teen Wolf lead the overall pack, Shadowhunters won the prize for top new TV show, and the presidential election helped boost standings of various late night talk shows.
Social Engagement And Fan Growth Measured
ListenFirst Media analyzed two metrics to come up with the results, "Social Engagement" and "Fan Growth." Social engagement measures overall social interactions across a number of the most popular social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram and Yahoo's Tumblr. Fan growth, which is also factored into the overall social engagement score, includes new fans and show followers on Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube. Twitter is excluded from the data due to an exclusive relationship between that company and Nielsen, but ListenFirst insists inclusion of Twitter data would not alter the results. Snapchat is also excluded because the company does not release the required data to third parties.
Pretty Little Liars Leads The Pack
Pretty Little Liars on the Freeform (formerly ABC Family) channel blew the competition away in social media engagement, with a total of 256 million interactions, a 25 percent increase from 2015, when it also came out on top. Although the network would like to continue the show, due to the wishes of the creators and cast, Pretty Little Liars is ending after its 7th season, the second half of which premieres in April.
"PLL has consistently been at the top," said Meghan Cahill, ListenFirst's head of TV strategy. "The storyline, especially going into their final season, has helped amplify their social engagement despite the algorithmic challenges from each of the platforms."
More Top TV Social Media Hits
Fortunately for Freeform, the network has another hit on its hands in the form of Shadowhunters. The show was the top series in terms of social engagement for new shows by a huge margin, with over 60 million interactions compared to 13 million for the runner up, Netflix' Stranger Things, which took the crown for top freshman series in the fan growth category. Netflix did particularly well in the overall social engagement rankings with Stranger Things joining Haters Back Off and Fuller House in the top ten.
Other winners were AMC's The Walking Dead and MTV's Teen Wolf which placed second and third respectively in the overall social engagement rankings, while the election helped late night talk shows The Late Late Show with James Corden on CBS and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon place at the top of the fan growth chart, with Corden's number one placing surely aided as well by the online popularity of his show's viral sensation "Carpool Karaoke" segments.
