Emmys Social Recap:
Did the Academy Agree
With the People?
By
Eileen Bernardo
Your Monday night social media feed might have looked a little different than other Monday nights. That’s because the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards aired! Wait, the Emmys aired on a Monday?! This was the first time in its history that the award show aired on a Monday night, a decision made earlier this year to avoid conflict with NFL coverage (it’s also why the show aired in August instead of September).
Last Friday, we predicted the Emmy winners. Should social media chatter (by the viewers) decide the winners over the Academy? On Sunday, we revisited the data to see if the predictions had changed… and there were a few, but the top choices for each category remained steadfast. Check out the infographic at the bottom of this post to see how the nominees fared against each other.
So… now that all is said and done, did the Academy agree with the people? If television viewers were in charge of bestowing the honors, would the outcome have been the same? Let’s find out.
According to the people, the Emmy should have gone to…
Orange is the New Black for Best Comedy Series. This was the clear social winner every time we crunched the data (and by a landslide – Modern Family wasn’t even in the top three through Sunday). Orange is the New Black received 40,097 social mentions yesterday versus Modern Family’s 5,725. That’s 7x more mentions than the show that brought home its fifth consecutive Emmy Award.
Ricky Gervais for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Ricky Gervais has led the pack in conversation every time we’ve crunched the data. Emmy winner Jim Parsons wasn’t even in the top 3 on Sunday. This honor definitely boosted the chatter around him as he came in second after looking at the numbers for yesterday. But even with the Emmy nod, the people were still rooting for Ricky Gervais as he had 3,753 mentions compared with Jim’s 3,130.
Taylor Schilling for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. It makes sense… the people wanted Orange is the New Black so it’s not unbelievable that they wanted the popular show’s lead actress. Taylor had more than 4x the number of mentions as Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus yesterday. Taylor brought in 10,718 mentions versus Julia’s 2,305. In fact, Julia, who was in third through Sunday, didn’t even make the top 3 yesterday. Lena Dunham and Amy Poehler rounded out the top 3 in the social world.
Game of Thrones for Best Drama Series. The fight for this honor ended up much closer than it was over the weekend. Game of Thrones came in with 25,596 mentions yesterday while Emmy winner Breaking Bad was a very close second with 24,679. That’s a difference of less than one hundred – quite the change from the data collected through Sunday where Game of Thrones received double the amount of mentions than Breaking Bad in second place. Maybe the people had a change of mind? Or was the chatter based on disagreement?
Matthew McConaughey for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Up until yesterday, the people and the Academy agreed that Bryan Cranston should take home the honors. Our previous analysis put Bryan ahead of Matthew both times, though Matthew was a very close second on Sunday with less than 600 mentions separating the two. Then numbers flipped yesterday, with Matthew bringing in 5,121 mentions versus Emmy-winning Bryan’s 3,435.
Kerry Washington for Best Actress in a Drama Series. Kerry Washington has been the favorite through it all, yet she failed to take home the Emmy. Yesterday, Kerry received 6,120 mentions, more than double that of second runner-up Lizzy Caplan’s 2,576. Despite never reaching the top 3 in any of our analysis thus far, the Emmy went home with Julianna Margulies who received only 1,225 mentions last night – the lowest amount of mentions of all the nominees.
Did you watch the Emmys? How do you feel about the winners?
Check out the infographic we created on Sunday for our predictions based on social media:
Eileen Bernardo is a social media strategist for Viralheat. She is well versed in new and social media and have worked across the converging fields of Communication from marketing to social media to public relations in large corporations, small businesses, and startups. Eileen has a M.S. in Public Relations and Corporate Communication from New York University and a B.A. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego.
