Talk about lots of involvement for fans: a new method devised to measure "fan engagement" of popular television shows on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has spoken up, and first on the list are a group of fangbangers and those against them.  Or whatever that means.

The first ever TV Fandex index, created by fan site host Wetpaint, has seen HBO's True Blood top the entire thing, followed by NCIS, House, Weeds, and the recently-cancelled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.


It's just an indicator, of course, of how devoted fans can be when discussing their favorite shows online.  And that element has been pretty important lately--remember those petitions when Chuck and Dollhouse went on the brink of cancellation?  Yeah, that.  While there are numerous measurements that the industry uses to measure a show's online popularity, this is the first to attempt to measure how devoted a show's fans are, as opposed to how popular it is.

Marketing speak time, then, from Wetpaint head Ben Elowitz: "Fans now have the tools to connect and evangelize, and they are using them with gusto.  The TV Fandex provides networks and producers with the first gauge of the winners and losers in creating and retaining an online audience ... We need to solve the problem of which shows have fan enthusiasm, not just across the TV dimension."

With that, and the pretty good ratings the show has been getting over the two weeks it's returned to the air, well, something is being done right.  We must be doing something right.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
(Image courtesy of HBO)