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Eurovision 2013 – The Perpetuation Of Viewing Via Social Media

Thursday, May 23, 2013 13:29

So our annual obsession with Eurovision continued last weekend. There was no Jedward, no Dustin, but with over 1.8m of us tuning in to RTE at some point over the four-ish hours of primetime Saturday TV, we couldn’t get enough of Eurovision 2013.

Ireland performed last on the night, and it seems that was an omen as we also came in last place. But that’s a whole other controversy! Ireland’s performer, Ryan Dolan, had done a great PR job over the weeks leading up to May 18^th, resulting in favourable betting odds and no doubt prompting people to tune in to watch him.

TV ratings outperformed last year and here are the key stats:

• 1,826,000 adults tuned into RTE at some point during the night, an increase of 4.2% vs 2012
• The peak viewership was 1,079,700 adults at 21.59 when Ireland was performing, an increase of 6.7% vs last year
• The average viewership was 799,700 adults, watching the whole show. This is an increase of 4.6% vs last year
• The show achieved an average share of 50% for adults and an average rating of 20.68, which was up 7% year-on-year
• The year-on-year TVR growth was highest for men, up 12% on 2012 versus a 3% increase for women
• The first year Jedward performed – 2011 – generated the highest ratings across all audiences since 1997, when Ireland hosted the Eurovision.

The interesting figure here is the increase in viewers at the moment when Ireland was on stage. In one sense there is no real surprise here, of course we would tune in to see our own song, but how did people know when that would be? The answer seems to lie in social media and how dual screen consumption perpetuates each other.

• On twitter, #eurovision trended all night, and was still the second highest trend three days later, but the volume of tweets was highest in the minutes before Ireland were on stage;
• See below graph. This represents the number of tweets per hour on Saturday, which included #eurovision. This was the most used hashtag on the night with approx 10 times the volume of other Eurovision hashtags used in Ireland that night.
• The first tiny uplift is 7pm, then 8pm, with 9 and 10pm being the two highest in terms of tweet volume, approx. 23,000 tweets per hour.

We know that big TV events drive online social conversations; in this case, the content of the tweets was directing viewers to tune into the TV, resulting in peak viewing in the minutes around the flurry of tweets.

So, the Irish obsession with Eurovision lives on, will we be as enthusiastic next year? Will Jedward be back? Or will it be a case of nul points? Tune in to twitter to find out!