Blowing up the Tube

On Thursday night, Jersey Shore premiered with a blowout of 8.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched series telecast in the history of MTV. Love it or hate it, the Shore is up 62% compared to last year’s debut, according to the Nielson Co.

On the up-and-up, the reality soap’s TV ratings have been progressively climbing, not “creeping,” since it first aired in December 2009 with 1.4 million viewers. The Season 2 opener in July 2010 had 5.2 million people hooked.

While this news is shocking, it’s also not a huge surprise. When you “punch” in a search on SnapStream’s TV Trends (see: Snooki’s face punch), the news results and media coverage match up 100%.

Tidal Wave of Jersey Shore News

All puns aside, the American news media propagates the popularity of Jersey Shore with continuous commentary and constant exposure. Think about it, any singular topic garnering this much attention in the press is going to incite public interest and provoke curiosity. No wonder people can’t get enough.

The shenanigans on Jersey Shore have become the go-to source of pop culture satire—producing a gold mine of interviews, media appearances, spin-offs and talk material that everyone wants to capitalize on.

Snooki Dominates TV Trends

Play around with the graph below. Or visit tvtrends.com to type in your own keywords and see the context of each mention within the closed captioning. (Playback is reserved for SnapStream TV Search users.)

Snooki gets the most references, the most “hits” – isn’t that interesting? She single-handedly outdoes the namesake of the show. If I was her, I’d command higher pay based on the sheer amount of media exposure she’s raking in. So in conclusion, Snooki is the icon and MVP of Jersey Shore.

Have a great Friday. GTL.

For fun, here’s the cast of Jersey Shore on The View:

Hey SnapStream Fans,

Since we’re always tracking the hottest topics on television, we thought we’d whip up a visual word cloud to represent the sizzling trends of the summer. Taking transcript excerpts from peaking keywords on TV Trends from May to present, we made this beautiful conglomerate of headlining news and pop culture.

Just one of the many cool things you can do with the rich information stored in TV Trends–you know it’s open and free for anyone to use, right?

See the original graph that shows the scope of television media coverage.

What I love about working at SnapStream is getting to see what people DO with our software. Here, Daniel Freed shows us a bona fide example of user-generated content. You have to watch the introductory video (below) that he recently put together using SnapStream.

For the past few years, Daniel Freed has been honing his skills at harnessing SnapStream for comedic purposes while working at Current TV’s clip show, infoMania. As the show’s supervising producer, he figured out how to integrate the technology into the clip show’s workflow.

The tagline for infoMania says it all: “Chewing up the week’s media so we can regurgitate it, half-digested, into your mouth.” Mmm, Yummy. But before the pundits can chew out the media, they have to first find the hot trending topics.

During that process, TV Search technology becomes a rich source of inspiration. It’s like giving squishy Play-Doh to a young child and saying “make something.”

In the hands of talented writers, and producers like Daniel, the editable, linkable and clippable substance (of television) can be played with and molded.

But to these creatives’ credit, you won’t find imagination for sale on our products page.

Currently, Daniel is looking for work on other shows, and he says if SnapStream is involved (or even potentially), he would love to continue creating fresh content with this technology. For a knee-slapping good chuckle, check out some more of Daniel’s work, on his page and on Hulu.

We took it to our TV Trends analytics to investigate the uptick of buzz surrounding the iPad, which hits the market tomorrow. The forecast calls for an explosive spike in the media frenzy as users get their hands on experimenting with the highly anticipated Apple tablet. This Wednesday’s episode of Modern Family indicates that it’s going to be a full-on mob scene. Brilliant stroke of product placement, I might add.

Let’s conduct a side-by-side comparison next to other major tech product launches from recent history to see where the iPad stands. If I’ve missed any big debuts, you can plug in keywords yourself on the TV Trends database.

Tech Product Launches in Review

April 2, 2010 – Day before the iPad launches. Media index currently at 146.

January 27, 2010 – Coming of the iPad is announced. Media index shoots to 289.

January 5, 2010 – Google’s Nexus One Phone premieres. Peak of 180.

October 22, 2009 – Launch party for Windows 7. Interest caps at 155.

November 11, 2008 – Google launches Gmail video chat. Reaching 147.

October 22, 2008 – Google’s first Android phone, HTC Dream is released. Index is 77.

Based on our data history, the iPad is positioned to be the overwhelming winner in garnering extensive interest from broadcast media. We will continue to monitor how the world reacts to the iPad post-release.

Click the graph to manipulate the search and view specific channel sources.

Before we started tracking TV trends in October 2008, there are some prime dates from recent memory that would be cool to look at as a frame of reference. These hallmark technology events generate contagious excitement in the media.

July 11, 2008 – Nationwide launch of Apple’s iPhone 3G.

November 19, 2007 – Amazon Kindle launches.

June 29, 2007 – iPhone is introduced into the United States.

January 9, 2007 – Apple’s first iPhone model is announced.

Global DVD sales are projected to decline by 12% this year, compared to 9% in 2009, according to a recent report from Strategy Analytics in Home Media Magazine. Even with Blu-ray expected to rake in $6.5 billion in worldwide sales, it won’t be enough to sustain or regain the industry’s momentum.

No surprise here, with all things digital these days. At SnapStream, we have been early proponents of digital media delivery. The same way iTunes flipped the music industry; DVR and VOD technology are changing the game for Hollywood, which has been slower on the uptake. It’s time to get with the program.

Going digital is right on track with going green; it’s like going paperless. And who has the space for masses of old CDs and DVDs, right? Upload this stuff to your SnapStream archive of however-many-terabytes and eliminate the needless clutter. Reinvent it.

Following this eco trend, every week, I’ll be featuring unique recycled art made out of the nostalgic discs of yesteryear.

If you come up with something cool, send me a pic and I’ll post it! rachel@snapstream.com

At the risk of becoming the official “In memory of VHS!” blog (see here and here, if you don’t know what I’m talking about), here’s another use for that old VCR when you replace it with a SnapStream Server or a SnapStream Mini:

How to make a VHS Video Toaster (on Instructables.com)