Social media fed TV’s real giant
LOS ANGELES— What’s the most impactful show of the past decade? If you said American Idol or Game of Thrones, you’re probably well over the age of 35 and use social media primarily to show off photos from your weekend trips.
All the cool kids know the correct answer is Pretty Little Liars ( PLL) and they’ve got the numbers to back it up. They’re just not the numbers you’re used to.
PLL, in which five teenage girls are terrorized by a mysterious villain after the disappearance of their classmate, was a hit by conventional standards, from its premiere in 2010 to the final season that concludes Tuesday with a two-hour finale (Bravo at 8 p.m.), followed by an hour of the cast and creators patting themselves on the back. The soap consistently finished near the top of the Nielsen ratings among females 12 to 34 and was the most-watched series on ABC Family, now known as Freeform.
But the show’s legacy truly emerges through a relatively new measurement: social media influence. By that yardstick, PLL is the most powerful series on TV, more than doubling the number who weigh in on The Walking Dead.
“It has a lot of unique elements that set it up for success in the social media space: an ongoing mystery, plot twists and turns, cliffhangers and what we call OMG moments,” Danielle Mullin told USA Today back in 2013, when she was the network’s marketing vice-president.
PLL remains the most tweetedabout show on television, generating more online comments per episode than the more ballyhooed Grey’s Anatomy, Empire or The Rachel Maddow Show.
“It wasn’t really intentional,” said series star Lucy Hale, who last year was the 42nd most-followed person on Instagram. “It was like social media got big right after the show started. I think we were the first show that included hashtags and really interacted with fans.”
Executive producer I. Marlene King credits Sara Shepard, who wrote the bestselling books the series is based on, for being active on social media well before cameras started rolling. The actresses were more than eager to follow her lead. Trading tweets with the stars during episodes became almost as much fun as predicting the next plot twist.
“I enjoyed it, I think, just as much as they did, getting to hear their theories and their thoughts about what might be coming up,” said actress Shay Mitchell, who admits she didn’t even know what Twitter was when the show got picked up.
Input from rabid fans even infiltrated the writers’ room.
“I’d say if you see an overwhelming trend on Twitter — if there is a couple that people really love or a couple that people really don’t love — we’ve taken that into account as we move the story forward,” King said.
Being accessible to viewers can comes at a price. The show came under fire in 2015 when it revealed that the baddie tormenting the quintet was transgender. That didn’t sit well with those who had praised the series for its inclusive nature.
The actresses have also learned that Internet followers can bare their claws. Sasha Pieterse was stung by cruel commentators who made remarks about her fluctuating weight. Ashley Benson got slammed when she posted a Halloween picture of herself dressed up as Cecil the lion, the creature killed by a dentist. She later apologized and made a hefty donation to the World Wildlife Fund.