Last Week of Rio Games Tops TV's Social Set

NBCUniversal's coverage of the Olympics across all its networks comprised the top seven TV shows mentioned on Twitter and Facebook last week, according to Nielsen Social.

The top show in social interactions on those two platforms was the Aug. 19 Olympics coverage, with 4,459,000 uniques (defined by Nielsen as "unique social media accounts that have authored original content related to a linear TV episode or engaged with that content"), followed by the Aug. 21 coverage, with 4,069,000 uniques; Aug. 18, with 3,971,000; Aug. 16 with 3,898,000; Aug. 15 with 3.891,000; Aug. 17 with 3,705,000; and Aug. 20 with 3,144,000.

In fact all of the top 10 TV shows in social media were sports programming, with the UFC PPV fight between Connor McGregor and Nate Diaz Aug. 20 coming in eighth (1,930,000 uniques), followed by a couple of NFL preseason games (Miami v. Dallas at 860,000 and Philadelphia v. Pittsburgh at 452,000).

The top non-sports TV offering in social last week was Freeform's Pretty Little Liars at 260,000 uniques.

Nielsen Social captures Tweets and posts about TV shows from three hours before through three hours after each initial telecast. Unique Tweet authors are defined as having a unique Twitter account that sent "at least one Tweet ascribed to a specific TV episode."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.