Royals-Mets World Series and CNBC GOP Debate Dominate the Week on Twitter

CNBC’s Republican Presidential Debate: Your Money, Your Vote — although it received much backlash from observers and critics — topped all series and specials for the week of October 26. According to Nielsen, the event totaled 1.48 million tweets written by 310,000 unique authors, which were seen by a unique audience of 7.18 million people (generating 221.05 million Twitter TV impressions). Wednesday, Oct. 28 was an historic night for the cable business network CNBC. Not only did its debate accrue the network’s all-time most-watched telecast in television viewers but it drew CNBC’s highest social numbers ever.

CBS has been a destination for many viewers in several years but the vast majority of its programs either skew towards an older audience and/or don’t garner social buzz. On Monday, Oct. 26, the network achieved both many viewers and the Twitter buzz with the series premiere of its new superhero drama “Supergirl” (1.79 million Twitter users/69,000 tweets/26,000 unique authors/6.92 million impressions). Melissa Benoist stars in the title role. The program also stars Calista Flockhart, Chyler Leigh and Mehcad Brooks.

Four of the five games of baseball’s 2015 World Series on Fox reached the top seven sports entries of the week, including taking the week’s entire top three spots. Topping all of television was the 14-inning, 5-hour-9-minute Game 1 from Tuesday, Oct. 27 (8.11 million Twitter users/1.09 million tweets/376,000 unique authors/147.56 million impressions) won by the Kansas City Royals 5-4. The Series’ finale from Nov. 1 (6.90 million Twitter users/1.27 million tweets/374,000 unique authors/131.82 million impressions) — where Kansas City overcame an 0-2 deficit in the ninth inning and later defeated the New York Mets 7-2 in 12 innings and the best-of-seven series four games to one; their first world title in 30 years — was runner-up among the week’s sports events on Twitter. For Fox, the 2015 World Series was its highest rated since 2009 when the Fall Classic had featured another New York team, the Yankees.

Most-Tweeted Minutes from the Top 3 Series and Specials:

• 15,500 Tweets were sent at 8:48pm EST on Wednesday, 10/28 about The Republican Presidential Debate: Your Money, Your Vote following Ted Cruz’ comment to the moderators about media bias
• 4,400 Tweets were sent at 9:03pm EST on Sunday, 11/1 about The Walking Dead following a flashback to Morgan’s (Lennie James) angry monologue.
• 1,300 Tweets were sent at 10:31pm EST on Wednesday, 10/28 about American Horror Story: Hotel after serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Lily Rabe) arrives in the hotel bar.

Most-Tweeted Minutes from the Top 3 Sports Events:

• 17,000 Tweets were sent at 1:19am EST on Wednesday, 10/28 about Game 1 of the 2015 World Series: New York Mets at Kansas City Royals after the Kansas City Royals won Game 1 in the 14th inning.
• 32,700 Tweets were sent at 12:35am EST on Monday, 11/2 about Game 5 of the 2015 World Series: New York Mets at Kansas City Royals after the Royals won The World Series for the first time in 30 years.
• 8,500 Tweets were sent at 11:04pm EST on Wednesday, 10/28 about Game 2 of the 2015 World Series: New York Mets at Kansas City Royals after the Royals won Game 2 of the World Series.

According to Nielsen: Activity metrics (Unique Authors and Tweets) are a measure of relevant Twitter activity from three hours before, during and three hours after an episode’s initial broadcast, local time. Reach metrics (Unique Audience and Impressions) measure the audience of relevant Tweets ascribed to an episode from when the Tweets are sent until the end of the broadcast day at 5am. For the series and specials list, the data includes new/live primetime and late fringe episodes only and excludes sports events. Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are only available for English-language U.S. Broadcast and Cable Networks.

Unique Audience – The total number of distinct Twitter accounts accruing at least one impression of one or more different Tweets ascribed to a TV episode.

Source: Nielsen