Social Media Interactions During Emmys Increase, but Broadcast Trails Other Awards Shows

Live viewership of Sunday night's Emmy Awards broadcast on ABC was up 6 percent from the previous year to 13.2 million viewers -- and it appears that year-to-year social-media activity revolving around the event rose as well.

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Primetime television's big night, however, trails major awards events in 2012 in social media buzz, according to data compiled by Trendrr, an analytics service that looked at public interactions on users Twitter, Facebook, Get Glue and Viggle social media accounts. 

"The Emmys don’t have the same ratings pull as these other events do, and the show lacked the big newsworthy moments which would have stirred up a lot of buzz," wrote Mark Ghuneim, CEO and Founder of Trendrr, in an e-mail to The Hollywood Reporter.

The MTV Video Music Awards reigns as the most social among award tentpole events in 2012 with 19.2 million daily activity interactions, according to Trendrr. The Emmys drew 1.6 million interactions, trailing such events as The Grammy Awards (17.1 million), The BET Awards '12 (10.1 million), The 84th Annual Academy Awards (4.4 million) and 2012 Teen Choice Awards (2.4 million).

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Social sentiment for the Emmys was 54 percent positive, 23 percent negative and 23 percent neutral. In contrast, social sentiment for Video Music Awards was 64 percent positive.

Another analytics tracker, Bluefin Labs, which put the number of social media interactions at 1 million for the Emmys, wrote on its blog that the awards show peaked on social media when host Jimmy Kimmel asked Tracy Morgan to lie on the stage as if he collapsed in order to get viewers commenting about the show.