Viacom’s research appears to have been proved right: twenty-somethings do want their old Nickelodeon shows back.
The first day of the company’s rebroadcast of 1990s shows on TeenNick doubled the channel’s prior ratings in the midnight to 2 a.m. time slot, Nickelodeon said Wednesday. It credited widespread chatter on social media Web sites with the ratings bounce.
The ratings are another indication of the entwined relationship between television and social media. TeenNick programmers were counting on that relationship to propel viewers to the “‘90s Are All That” programming block, which is featured from midnight to 2 a.m. and repeats from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.
As The New York Times reported last week, comments from former Nickelodeon viewers who were nostalgic for old shows like “All That” and “Doug” inspired the rebroadcasts in the first place.
On Monday, when the programming block made its debut, there was ample attention to it online: Trendrr.TV, which ranks television shows by the amount of online activity around them, found that TeenNick claimed five of the top 10 positions on its daily ranking.
The channel said in a news release that its Facebook page for the programming block “doubled in fans overnight by 100,000.” The channel also dominated Twitter’s constantly refreshed list of trending topics.
It helps that TeenNick already tends to be talked about heavily online. But there was a clear spike when the shows from the 1990s had their premieres.
For TeenNick, there was very little risk involved in creating the ‘90s programming block, because the overnight hours were rather low-rated.
On Monday, an average of 555,000 people tuned in between midnight and 2 a.m., fully double last year’s total during that time period, according to Nielsen data. Of the 555,000 viewers, 229,000 were between the ages of 18 and 34, the demographic that grew up watching the shows in the 1990s. Most of the others were under the age of 18.
The data suggests, then, that the old shows are finding a new audience as well as a nostalgic one.
The challenge for TeenNick now is a social one: keeping the chatter about the ‘90s shows going when the rebroadcasts are no longer a new idea. Facebook and Twitter have proved to be powerful tools for driving viewers to television for one-time events; can they pull it off every day?
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