$434 million to $295 million; Change: -32%
The studio gained $106 million on the sale of a music publishing catalog, but that was no match for the $278 million boost in 2012 from a sale of Spider-Man merchandising rights. Year-end hits Captain Phillips and American Hustle helped take the sting out of summer flops After Earth and White House Down as pressure from investor Daniel Loeb has the studio cutting costs and focusing on TV.
It’s official: AMC dominated the 2013-14 television season — at least on Twitter.
Nielsen Social released a data report on Monday analyzing the shows, specials and moments that reached the biggest Twitter audiences and engaged fans at record levels in the U.S. this season, from Sept. 1, 2013 through May 25, 2014.
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While ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars, ABC’s The Bachelor and HBO’s Game of Thrones came close, the two top series on Twitter over the past season were Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. The Breaking Bad series finale set a record for reach of a single airing as well as average over time, as tweets about the series finale reached 9.1 million people across the night on Sept. 29, 2013, thanks to live tweets from stars Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston. Also among the top 10 series are Teen Wolf, American Horror Story: Coven, Scandal, The Voice and Dancing With the Stars.
The Voice made TV-related Twitter history this past season as well, as its Instant Save initiative (allowing viewers to save contestants via tweets) set the record for total tweets posted around the May 13 airing — 1.92 million — and sent a record number of tweets in one minute: 310,000 at 8:59 p.m. ET. The assigned hashtag #VoiceSave was mentioned in 1.5 million tweets, as the episode determined which contestants would head into the following week’s finale. (YouTube star Christina Grimmie was saved.)
That moment became the top minute of all TV-related Twitter activity for the season so far — even above Super Bowl XLVIII, the program with the biggest all-around Twitter activity and reach, with 15.3 million people seeing a total of 25.3 game-related tweets. The top hashtag of the TV event was #esurancesave30, mentioned 1.8 million times, as Esurance launched a contest awarding $1.5 million via a post-big game ad and a winner’s announcement made by spokesman John Krasinski on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The Twitter-based promotion helped push the Denver Broncos-Seattle Seahawks game ahead of all other football matches in the season as well as the NCAA final game, the Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony and the NBA All-Star Game.
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In the awards space, the Grammy Awards triggered the most tweets of the season (13.8 million), and Arby’s humorous tweet to Pharrell Williams had the biggest effect, with 57,000 retweets. The Oscars made the most impressions (1 billion, as 13.9 million Twitter users each saw 75 tweets on average). Ellen Degeneres‘ Oscars selfie was retweeted 1.1 million times. Additionally, the Golden Globes, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards and MTV Movie Awards triggered more conversation than the State of the Union broadcast, followed by the Emmy Awards, People’s Choice Awards and Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
See below for a full breakdown of Twitter’s top TV moments, according to Nielsen Social:
Email: Ashley.Lee@THR.com
Twitter: @cashleelee
