Viewership for other major award shows in 2011 has increased from previous years, which might give a boost to this year’s Oscar telecast. Last year, with a shoot-out between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, the Academy Awards captured an audience of 41.7 million viewers – the largest in five years.

“The increased viewership for awards shows coincides with the recent trend towards larger audiences for live events,” said Pat McDonough, Senior Vice President for Insights and Analysis at Nielsen. “Watching live events, such as an award show or sporting event, allows the viewer to feel closer to the action and generates a greater appeal to watch. Moreover, simultaneously using Twitter and other social media to follow the event helps enhance the experience even more.”

The Golden Globes and the Grammy Awards have also seen a steady increase in viewership over the past three years.

Recently, when 29% of the U.S. population tuned into the Academy Awards on March 7, more than 13% of those viewers spent time on the web at the same time. For the 2009 Oscars, 25.6% of the population tuned in and 8.7% surfed the web simultaneously. A large percentage of those watching TV and surfing the web visited Facebook, Google or Yahoo!, a trend also seen in this year’s Super Bowl Super Bowl.

The films and the nominees certainly play a role in the size and demographic makeup of the Oscar viewer. In years where a minority was nominated in a major category, viewership among that ethnic group grew, most notably with African American viewership. Precious, which is nominated for best film also boasts nominees for best actress in a leading (Gabourey Sidibe) and supporting (Mo’Nique) role as well as director Lee Daniels. Past winner Morgan Freeman (Invictus) is also nominated this year.

With the Academy Awards on March 7, fans online are increasingly discussing the nominees for best picture (a category that has expanded to include 10 films this year) along with the actors and actresses nominated in a lead role.

While it’s an honor just to be nominated… Avatar dominates (much like it did at the global box office) the conversations in the movie category, grabbing nearly a quarter of all buzz surrounding the Oscar-nominated films.

In the main acting categories, Golden Globe winners Jeff Bridges (for Crazy Heart) and Sandra Bullock (for The Blind Side) take the buzz lead with more than a quarter of the buzz against their competition.

For years, it has been assumed that home internet usage would cannibalize live television viewing, but there’s something interesting happening between social networking and live television.  Could it be that what Pete Blackshaw termed “telecommunities” – people simultaneously watching live television programs and chatting in real time with an online network of like-minded fans - will gain scale and give consumers a reason to stick with live viewing?

Let’s look at what happened during the Oscars.

During this year’s broadcast, we used Nielsen’s “Convergence Panel” – a sample of homes in which we measure both television and Internet in the same households — to monitor the people in our panel who were simultaneously following the Oscars on live television and over the Internet.  We saw some very impressive numbers.  Of course, it’s important to note that the base sizes for this research are small – in the dozens of users, not the hundreds — so we can’t draw truly scientific conclusions from the data.  That said, we did observe some interesting directional trends:

• More than 1 in 10 people (11%) watching the Oscars this year did so while logged onto the Internet.  This is nearly four times greater than the normal rate of simultaneous usage we observe.
• While there was some expected surfing to places like IMDB for more information on movies, the true winner of the night was Facebook.
• People who used Facebook during the broadcast used it for an average of 76 minutes.  This compares to a little more than 30 minutes on average for MySpace, and just a little more than 20 minutes for the major portals.
• People who used Facebook while watching the Oscars watched about 50% more of the broadcast than the average Oscar viewer.

Additionally, we estimate that more than 100,000 messages were sent via Twitter during the broadcast – that’s more than 400 message per minute, or nearly 7 per second.

What were people talking about?  From my personal observations of Tweets during the broadcast, it was just what you’d expect if you had a living room filled with thousands of your closest friends.  Comments ranged from the snarky (”OMFG when did SJP get a boob job?????”) to the gushing (”My faves from the Oscars – Kate<3, Penn, Ledger’s win and his darling family…I shed tears, I won’t lie.”)  Some directed to the broadcaster (”Dear CBS: Next time something big like, oh The #oscars is on, RESCHEDULE your shows! I’m sure many would LOVE to watch Amazing Race now!”) and others regarding the advertising (”after watching a billion diet coke commercials during the oscars, i caved in and got a can”)  Interestingly, Tweets came in from all over the world in a range of languages – a true world wide event.

The really interesting thing was that to be part of the telecommunity, you had to experience the conversation in real time with the broadcast.  At one point I paused the program to say goodnight to my kids – when I came back and starting viewing where I had left off, the Twitter comments were all out of sync with the broadcast.  I immediately jumped forward to the live broadcast so I could keep up with the conversation.  If you watched the program on DVR on Monday – forget it! – the telecommunity had disappeared and you’d be left to watch this very social program, all by yourself.  How sad.

While there is still a lot to learn about the interaction of social networking and TV, it’s clear that there is opportunity for programmers and advertisers to leverage telecommunities to drive audience participation with both the programs and the advertising.  And it doesn’t have to be just live programming such as awards shows and sporting events.  Any show with a deeply loyal fan base could drive live viewing and deeper engagement through these telecommunities.

As social networking because more pervasive, we will continue to study its impact on television and advertising. Learn more about how social networking is expanding its global reach.

New advertisers for the 2009 Awards and how many minutes they ran are listed in the chart below. Hyundai, the top advertiser, ran several general ads, as well as three 30-second spots for its Genesis brand. Sprint Nextel promoted its wireless and web access services. Bristol-Myers Squibb ran one ad for Orencia, a rheumatoid arthritis drug. National Amusements had one ad for DreamWorks Pictures’ Soloist movie, and Techtronic placed a commercial for Hoover vacuum cleaners.

In 2008, movies nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director spent more than $118.8 million (all figures quoted exclude internet and outdoor advertising) on advertising in the United States. Although neither Brad nor Angelina won for their nominated categories, their movies were the biggest spenders. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was nominated in three of the four categories, spent $31 million-more than any other movie, while Changeling, nominated in just one category, ranked second in spending: $29.6 million. Frozen River, nominated for Best Actress, spent the least, under $400,000.

Spending on movies nominated in the Best Picture and Best Director categories was $64.3 million (the same movies were nominated for both categories). In comparison, the movies in the Best Actor category spent $57.3 million on advertising, while movies for Best Actress spent $55.5.

Milk, winner of the Best Actor category, spent $11.3 million on advertising; more than double that of The Reader, the movie that nabbed the Best Actress Oscar.

Percent of Blog Buzz Volume for Best Actor and Actress Nominees within Nominee Discussion, January 1-February 15, 2009

Buzz volume spiked for this year’s best actor and best actress Oscar nominees on January 12^th following the 2009 telecast of the Golden Globes and again on January 22^nd as the nominations for the 81^st Academy Awards were announced.   The most notable spikes in online chatter were driven by Kate Winslet after winning two Golden Globes for her leading role in “Revolutionary Road” and supporting role in “The Reader” and Brad Pitt, as consumers discuss whether he will take home an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” after losing to Mickey Rourke at the Golden Globes.

Pre-Oscar Internet Buzz Trend for Best Actor and Best Actress Nominees, Among All Blogs

Other Online-related notes on the Oscars from Nielsen:

• Online interest in the Oscars is up significantly this year, with unique visitors to oscars.movies.yahoo.com growing 462 percent year-over-year, from 832,000 in January 2008 to 4.7 million in January 2009. The top page driving traffic was a blog post about Angelina Jolie’s unusual fashion choice to wear her dress backwards for the SAG Awards.
• Oscar.com also enjoyed double digit growth in January, from 471,000 unique visitors last year to 1.0 million in 2009.
• Collectively, the movie Web sites of the films nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress drew 450,000 unique visitors in January. Last year the Oscars were still under the cloud of the writers’ strike, which may account for increased interest this year.

With the exception of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, each of the Best Film nominees saw triple-digit percentage increases in theater count after they were nominated. The increased distribution of these films also led to box office sales increases anywhere from 18% to 72% in the weeks following the nominations.

THEATER COUNT OF BEST FILM NOMINEES

BOX OFFICE SALES OF BEST FILM NOMINEES

Nielsen also found that impressive gross sales are not required for a film to be nominated in the top categories. For example, Frost/Nixon, in movie theaters for eleven weeks, earned only $17 million at the U.S. box office through February 16, while fellow nominee Benjamin Button pulled in close to $123 million since its December 25 release.

TOTAL GROSS SALES OF BEST FILM NOMINEES