People’s Daily Online: What role does China’s social media play in transmitting TV programs?

Benjamin Xiao: TV content is still the sources of most Weibo’s discussions; at the same time, Weibo can visualize audiences’ opinions and reactions towards the content. In an era where engaging TV audiences is the key, deeper understanding of the audiences’ behaviors will provide tremendous benefits for networks and other media stakeholders.

People’s Daily Online: How do you expect the future development of CSM in terms of emerging social media in China?

Benjamin Xiao: For over 16 years, CSM has been a leader in TV media research. As we move forward with new methods and tools to assess new media platforms, CSM will be at the forefront to provide the media industry with the most comprehensive TV evaluation system. The system will be one that based on qualitative and quantitative data. It will center on TV ratings, but supplemented by ratings from TV content distributed online and social media data.

People’s Daily Online: Kantar Media, the parent company of CSM, has conducted similar cooperation with Twitter. Based on your statistics, what kind of TV programs attracts more social media users? Are Weibo users’ preferences similar with Twitter’s?

Benjamin Xiao: Based on our analysis, Weibo audiences primarily discuss four genres of TV programs in the social media sphere: entertainment shows, TV dramas, news and sports, with entertainment shows generating the most buzz. Twitter audiences are similar to Weibo. There are some exceptions, of course. Take for example, in the United States, main TV drama series are episodic by nature and are broadcast weekly and split seasonally. Some shows are produced with a suspense or cliffhanger to engage audiences to come back. This creates an echo effect, where audiences will go on social media after program ends to share opinions, thoughts and reactions, which will generate buzz that attract new Twitter users to watch. Programs are also produced few episodes beforehand to allow ample time to change the creative directions based on fan reactions. This happens on a smaller scale in China, as series are produced sequentially and completed before airing, audiences’ opinions on Weibo will get new audiences to backtrack and watch the series but less likely to change the creative directions of the series. However, seasonal entertainment shows are adapting to this way of social media participation quiet effectively in China.