Some people believe that social media can play a huge part in attracting viewers for hit shows – but NBC isn’t so convinced.
Twitter believed that its social media set-up would be able to “deliver eyeballs to your shows,” but NBC Universal research chief Alan Wurtzel believes otherwise.
While Twitter and Facebook played a good part for the recently aired Winter Olympics as far as social-related chatter is concerned, it didn’t translate as well to viewership as the broadcaster was hoping.
Said Wurtzel, “Why wouldn’t I want to say to you, ‘We have a potent new way in which we can drive ratings ‘” He followed that “it just isn’t true. I am saying the emperor wears no clothes. It is what it is. These are the numbers.”
This is an interesting change in tempo, as NBC Universal was previously supportive of the partnership with Twitter, through a strategic partnership that would have tied the two together.
“We want to make the conversation on Twitter lead to consumption,” said Sam Schwartz at the time of the agreement.
However, there is still some solid support for some of NBC’s other programming, even if Wurtzel didn’t go into detail about it.
Source: Recode.net
