Nielsen: Grammys Grab Social Spotlight

Sunday night's Grammy Awards broadcast on CBS dominated the weekly (Feb. 6-12) top 10 list of series or specials generating the most social media buzz.

Acccoring to Nielsen Social, the broadcast generated over 9 million uniques (9,961,000 to be exact) and 27,600,000 interactions.

"Uniques" and "interactions" are defined as "total relevant U.S. social media activity grossed across Facebook and Twitter from three hours before through three hours after broadcast, local time."

A distant second—but still three times the next-most-social series or special—was AMC's The Walking Dead, which racked up 1,636,000 uniques and 2,561,000 interactions.

Coming in at number three—likely thanks to the anticipation, which was rewarded, that Melissa McCarthy would reprise her send up of White House press secretary Sean Spicer—wasSaturday Night Live on NBC, which drew 558,000 uniques and 883,000 interactions.

Rounding out the top five were CNN's Debate Night in America square-off over Obamacare Feb. 7 between Senators and former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz and a WWE pay-per-view bout Feb. 12 at 264,000 uniques and 693,000 interactions.

Sports is under a separate category. Leading that list was ABC's (and ESPN Deportes') airing of the Golden State Warriors versus the Oklahoma City Thunder with 850,000 uniques and 1,595,000 interactions. It was the highly promoted matchup between Kevin Durant (GSW) and his old team and teammates, particularly OKC star Russell Westbrook.

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.