How 'Scandal' and 'Hannibal' Are Winning The Social Media Game

When thinking of must-tweet TV, it’s an outright scandal to not consider Shonda Rhimes’ political drama, starring Kerry Washington as the utterly mesmerizing Olivia Pope.

ABC’s “Shondaland” Thursdays

are no stranger to favorable Nielsen ratings, but they’re even cozier with Nielsen’s

TV Ratings, which launched just last fall. The third season premiere of

“Scandal” dominated

the charts then — and Season 4 has already topped

Twitter discussion twice.

Nielsen studies have proven

that the more a show is tweeted about, the higher its ratings go. This comes as an addition

to the increasing web socialization of television viewing shaped

with the help of “second screens” — that

is, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Whether through Twitter,

, Instagram or Tumblr, the idea of sharing one’s viewing experience

live and through hashtags is a trend that’s quickly defining what this “golden

age” of television excels at: amplifying the fan experience.

“I think as far as the

development, [ABC Studios] just really wanted to make [“Scandal”] a fantastic

show and social media at the time wasn’t part of that — it was just good

storytelling,” Ben Blatt, executive director of digital marketing for the

ABC Entertainment Group, told Indiewire.

“But when we actually launched

‘Scandal,’ which was in the spring corridor of our season that year, we knew

that social media was a necessary element to all show marketing,” he said. “We’re very lucky that the

talent — the cast lead by Kerry Washington — was very open early on and very

aggressive on their own about using Twitter.”

Blatt described the first

season of “Scandal” as a test drive to gauge reaction at having the show’s talent

tweeting alongside the fans. The interactions received such a strong response

that season two kicked off an entire social media campaign centered around a

plot where the president (Tony Goldwyn) became the target of an assassination

attempt.

A show as popular and

tweet-able as “Scandal” is due to the sum of its parts. Blatt described

“Scandal” as a show filled with action, mystery and intrigue, making it “something that is very easily accessible on a platform where people are talking

about it in real time.”

READ MORE: Black Girls Can Be Losers Too: From ‘Living Single’ to ‘Scandal’

The neatly packaged term that

encompasses the use of social platforms in real time when an episode airs — social TV — is not a new concept.

Before Tumblr, there was

LiveJournal communities, online forums, chat rooms — and the fantasy football

platforms around 13 to 14 years ago, according to Jesse Redniss, co-founder of

BRaVe Ventures, a startup entertainment and tech-advising firm. He previously served as senior vice president of digital for the USA Network, where he worked for nine years and was involved with projects on shows like “Suits” and “Burn Notice.”

Redniss said platforms such

as Yahoo or CBS Sports had hundreds of thousands of people on their laptops

watching stats update in real time while watching football games—with blogs in

existence for fans to talk smack to one another in chat rooms.

Fast forward to 2004, where according to Redniss, “Lost” was one of the very first shows that began exploring a story world

outside of a program’s 42-minute window. “Carlton Cuse and his team

created a very immerse world that went across websites and went into different

forums and literally sent a consumer down a path of a really immersive

experience that broke off into their everyday lives,” he said.

“They could come in and really

experience more of ‘Lost’ whenever they wanted to.”

Today, Redniss said networks

such as Bravo and Fox (think “Red Band Society” and “Gotham”) are doing great

work with their social media strategies.

READ MORE: ‘Gotham’ Review: Batman Be Damned, This Cop Drama Still Works

Today’s most popular social

platforms didn’t emerge until around the mid-2000s, but Redniss also

noted that social TV isn’t only bound by the real-time conversation that

happens on a platform while the show is on. “Social TV also encompasses

the long-tail engagement that fans — rabid fans — have,” he said.

And that is where people like the “SuperWhoLocks” (a portmanteau of the shows “Supernatural,” “Doctor Who” and

“Sherlock” fandoms) and self-named “Fannibals” of Tumblr come in.

In particular, NBC’s “Hannibal,” currently in

production on its upcoming third season, is a dark and savory psychological

horror-thriller with a ravenous, dedicated fan base that has thrived on Tumblr.

Developed by Bryan Fuller

(“Pushing Daisies”), “Hannibal” stars Hugh Dancy as criminal profiler Will Graham and

Mads Mikkelsen as the infamous cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. Jared Goldsmith, vice

president of digital marketing at NBC, chalks up the show’s boom on Tumblr to

the inventive ventures of the “Hannibal” fan base.

“In the case of ‘Hannibal,’

we very quickly saw there was a community that built quickly on Tumblr and in a

really unique way,” Goldsmith said. “I think part of it was a

combination of having a fan base that is really creative and engaged and has a

passion for the show, which still shocks us and impresses us to this day.”

Goldsmith said the team

behind the official Tumblr for the show are first and foremost fans, just like

the general audience. Thus, anyone who takes a gander at the Tumblr site for “Hannibal”

will quickly spot humorous and conversational commentary on the show, supported by gifs, gorgeous fan art and witty hashtag puns.

“Twitter lends itself more to

the real-time conversation of live-viewing where as Tumblr is more about the

extended conversation — beyond the time that a show is airing,” Goldsmith said.

READ MORE: ‘Hannibal’ to Begin ‘Red Dragon’ Story in Season 3, with ‘Silence of the Lambs’ To Follow

As for the future of social

TV? A handful of recent

studies and surveys indicate that teenagers are fleeing Facebook for

alternative services like Twitter, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Snapchat — but

that hardly leaves Facebook out of the race for social power — it’s still the top

social network for most shows.

Redniss said said a fan’s social mediums of

choice really boils down to what type of fan they are — after all, there’s a

difference between the casual viewer, who posts a Facebook status or a few

tweets, and the super fans who blog about a certain show throughout the week.

“We already have an official

Snapchat account on ‘Scandal,’ and so we’re trying to continuously build the

presence on new platforms,” Blatt said. “At the end of the day, I

think Scandal performs on a variety of platforms very well and it’s just a

matter of what you’re going there for.”

“For example, we use Pinterest to showcase

the fashion of the show,” he said. “People love to know what

Olivia Pope is wearing.”

TV viewer and super fan

culture has evolved quickly and has become global thanks to the outreach

of today’s online tools. Now, more than ever, fans are able to continue

experiencing the story world of their favorite shows on portable devices and

through universal hashtags that promise that no matter how much a viewer

chooses to engage, they will be instantly connected to a mass network of other

viewers and fans like themselves.

While heavy-hitters like HBO

find themselves slowly unbundling, social media and television are speeding

toward a perfect union.

“People love to talk about

television and that’s why TV drives so much conversation on Facebook and

Twitter,” Goldsmith said. “It’s a way for viewers to

extend the couch and have more people to talk with, share with and make

comments. I think as new platforms emerge, you’re going to see even more unique

ways to do that.”

“I think we’re just scratching the surface.”

READ MORE: Cord-Cutters Unite: CBS Follows HBO With Streaming Service Plan (Including ‘Twin Peaks’)

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