Fall TV Social Buzz: ‘A Million Little Things,’ ‘Murphy Brown’ Lead Freshman Class

ABC’s new drama “A Million Little Things” was the most engaging new broadcast TV show across social media following its premiere last week, with CBS’s “Murphy Brown” reboot with Candice Bergen also turning in strong numbers, according to data compiled by ListenFirst Media.

Social posts for “A Million Little Things” garnered 220,349 social reactions the week of Sept. 24-30 across platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The show also had the most content shares, with about 15,000 for the week, out of all new broadcast shows for the fall 2018 season, per ListenFirst.

“A Million Little Things” has been likened to NBC’s hit drama “This Is Us,” but it’s worth noting that “This Is Us” had a social-engagement score three times higher during its premiere week in 2016, as measured by ListenFirst.

Also, the volume of social-media chatter doesn’t always correspond to TV ratings. The premiere of “A Million Little Things” averaged a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49 and 5.1 million viewers, not exactly a knock-it-out-of-the-park performance.

“Murphy Brown” saw solid results following its premiere, ranking as the No. 1 most-talked-about new fall show on social with almost 68,000 mentions and close to 180,000 social engagements. Other buzzed-about new shows included The CW’s “Legacies” and NBC’s “Manifest.”

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This season’s reboots like “Murphy Brown” and CBS’s “Magnum P.I.” are whipping up social conversation, but the overall reaction has been mixed, according to Jason Klein, co-CEO of ListenFirst. “While a large amount of viewers are praising the show content, others are complaining about the ‘lack of new content’ and are upset with ‘yet another revival,’ signaling possible reboot fatigue,” he said.

Meanwhile, “Murphy Brown” also has proven to be politically divisive. Conversation about the show has been both positive and negative, with some viewers praising the brilliant jokes and others viewing it as “leftist propaganda” and expressing displeasure over Hillary Clinton’s cameo appearance.

Here’s the breakdown of the analysis of the top 10 new fall broadcast shows, ranked by social engagement (all reactions to official posts) and conversation (mentions of a show).

Social Engagement: 2018 New Fall Broadcast TV Shows

Source: ListenFirst data for Sept. 24-30, 2018, measuring volume of post reactions, likes, shares, comments, and retweets across official TV pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Google+

Conversation: 2018 New Fall Broadcast TV Shows

Source: ListenFirst data for Sept. 24-30, 2018, measuring conversation volume (mentions and hashtags) on Twitter, Facebook, Google+