Option to be active: Television sports fan Source: The Daily Telegraph
Neil Keene, The Daily Telegraph, reports
Prime-time television is no more a spectator sport for couch potatoes - social media has helped them be part of the action.
Hit shows like My Kitchen Rules and Celebrity Apprentice, and live sports such as Nine's cricket broadcast, are tapping into Australia's exploding obsession with media multi-tasking, urging viewers to be involved in real-time via Facebook and Twitter.
That made a kind of virtual water-cooler - an online space where viewers go to vent their feelings on a program as it goes to air.
TV industry commentator David Knox, from the TV Tonight blog, said social media now set the tone for shows even before official ratings figures were released.
"Ben Elton's show (the short-lived Live From Planet Earth) was arguably killed off by Twitter before it had even bedded in," he said.
"When you're live and trialling new material, Twitter is absolutely unforgiving. But it is also a remedy against piracy because it compels us to watch free-to-air as it happens to engage with the live debate."
A Yahoo!7 survey of nearly 8000 TV fans found more than 40 per cent used Facebook while watching their favourite shows, with many sharing comments as the programs went to air.
More than a quarter watched based on recommendations from social networks and about the same number said they had been made aware of a program via social media.
Yahoo!7 head of television Kristin Carlos said the number of people using official TV show websites and watching them simultaneously doubled in the past 12 months.
In November the company launched Fango, an app that lets users "check in" to shows and chat online. It had 200,000 downloads, with 10,000 new users daily.
"Viewers are changing the way they watch TV and we've changed the way we produce shows to cater for this," Channel 7 CEO Tim Worner explained.
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