’Scandal’ leaves live-tweeting legacy
ABC’s political soap which launched mid-season with little fanfare in 2012 to tepid reviews and disappointing ratings, bows out in April this year.
Following the exploits of Emmynominated Kerry Washington as Washington, DC crisis manager Olivia Pope and her team of problemsolving “gladiators”, the show didn’t immediately take off and it looked destined to be strangled at birth.
As it nears its finale six years on, however, it bows out as a bona fide hit that changed the way we watch TV, ushering in the era of live-tweeting shows, known as “double-screening”.
Its army of vocal Twitter fans, who also call themselves “gladiators”, helped ratings for soar more than 50% to 12.7 million an episode by 2014.
Much of its success was driven by the goodwill it engendered as an intriguing Washington, DC political story of sex, murder and doubledealing starring a strong black female character.
But its pioneering prime-time showrunner,
creator Shonda Rhimes, has been credited with the insight that stars and producers live-tweeting episodes along with fans, makes a difference in ratings.
Rhimes would offer personal insights into production and the scriptwriting process and, most importantly, rope in the cast to post their own thoughts in real-time.
It is a common tactic these days, but no one was really doing it on a regular basis before Rhimes.
By the second season, was drawing 119 000 tweets per episode and ratings began to climb, particularly among the millennial age group that advertisers covet.
The show is in its final run of 11 episodes and finishes for good on April 19.
Tony Goldwyn, who plays ex-president Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant, Pope’s longtime love interest, told journalists how the cast had embraced Rhimes’s groundbreaking strategy.
“It completely transformed my perception of social media. I was very skeptical and judgmental about it, and just thought . . . it was irrelevant to me,” said Goldwyn
Jeff Perry, who plays vice-president Cyrus Beene, joked that the only negative reaction to the live-tweeting had come from other actors.
Though they can be full of praise, he said that “a little more often they’re [annoyed] at us. ‘You guys made that work and now I have to tweet all the time’.”
Social media aside, has an equally important reason to be proud of its reputation for pioneering TV – its commitment to diversity.
All the characters in the most powerful roles are women, and the show has always been committed to reflecting the racial diversity of the modern-day US.
“When we first aired, most of the questions I received centred around the fact that there had not been a black woman as the lead in a television drama in my lifetime,” said Washington, 40.
“Now you’d be hard-pressed to find a network that does not have a show with a woman of colour at its centre.” —