Ratings for NBC’s coverage of the 2012 London Olympics have been through the roof, but began dipping in week two — is it possible viewers have begun suffering from “Olympic fatigue,” figuring after a week and a half that it’s enough already?
That’s a possibility, and may be holding true when it comes to social media as well as ratings, which are still massive but seem to be trending downward. In fact, last night’s most-tweeted about broadcasts — Olympics coverage, of course — on both network television and cable were each in the 600,000 range, about half the numbers we saw last week.
Meanwhile, the debut of one non-Olympics series caused a commotion on Twitter, with nearly 300,000 tweets for the debut of TLC’s new reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Child. The spin-off of Toddlers & Tiaras, in which certifiable Southern mothers dress their young daughters like Tammy Wynette circa 1977 to compete in horrifying beauty pageants, focuses on six-year-old pageant queen Honey Boo Boo Child and her overbearing mother, who gleefully admits that “our family is crazy!”
Meanwhile, NBC’s sneak peek of its new Matthew Perry sitcom Go On hardly made a ripple in the Twitterverse, despite being debuted right in the midst of the Olympics. The pilot of Go On racked up a mere 16,588 tweets, which was fewer an episode of Big Brother and a rerun of Supernatural. Other shows that beat Go On in Twitter volume included SpongeBob SquarePants, the season finale of Dallas, a rerun of South Park and a new episode of Futurama.
(Courtesy trendrr.tv)
