The Internet chatter around the April 1 season premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been fierce, but how does it stack up to other eagerly anticipated shows, like Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, and American Idol?
The Daily Beast partnered with social-media tracking firm Trendrr to find which shows with season or series premieres since 2011 lived up to the buzz and hype.
For our final ranking, we took into account Trendrr’s overall social-media score for each show across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, and Miso—for the day of each show’s season premiere and the day of the following episode, to see if the social-media hype continued past the premiere. The television shows with the top 15 scores for the premiere and the next episode made our MVP list.
One final note: for each program across these social-media platforms Trendrr counts not simply mentions of the show’s name, for instance, “Jersey Shore,” but also other key terms, like “Gym Tan Laundry,” or “Snooki.” For each program, Trendrr looks at from 20 to 50 relevant phrases.
-Clark Merrefield