• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, October 17, 2016

Nielsen today released data tallying conversations on social media — Twitter and Facebook specifically — about network TV’s premiere week shows, with NBC’s “This Is Us” topping the list, unless you look at it another way. Then it’s E!'s “Rob & Chyna” and FX’s “Atlanta.”

Nielsen’s data dump makes good on a promise in January to begin including Facebook info, which turned the once-titled Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings into Nielsen’s Social Content Ratings.

Combined with other data--like a Nielsen stat that says 60% of smartphone and tablet owners use those devices while watching TV--this is another piece of potentially valuable data. Crunching it could give advertisers hints about where to place advertising, or a glimpse into how well a content creator’s marketing is working.

It seems like an instant water-cooler reading, for what that’s worth. The networks, for one, seemed eager to get the data.

Top line info: More women (54%) than men (46%) posted comment about premiere week shows, but the difference was so slight Nielsen called it about even. But women posted more often--64% of them were on either social platform chatting about premiere week programs.

It does appear there is a gender split about where these mentions are happening. Nielsen data say 59% of the Facebook posts came from women, on average. The Facebook demo was evenly split between 18-34s, who accounted for 41% of the comments, and users 35-54, who were involved in 42% of the interactions. The rest were done by 55-plus Facebook visitors.

Nielsen didn’t immediately break down the figures for Twitter.

For the week, Sept 19-25 Nielsen said it measured 83.2 million total social TV interactions across sports, series and specials, on Facebook and Twitter,  an average 11.9 million interactions coming from 6.1 million people each day. Nielsen counts original Facebook and Twitter comments and engagement which shows up in likes, comments and re-Tweets. I would suppose that means comments that say--”This show stinks” as well as “LOL at this new show,” or other meaningful chatter.

Facebook, by far, is where the action was. For example, there were an average 5.4 million uniques on Facebook during the week, and just 639,000 for Twitter.

But interactions had hints of being a little more encouraging for Twitter. There were over 2 million premiere week interactions. Still, on Facebook, that total was nearly 9.9 million.

Nielsen is measuring for linear air times and on a 24-hour/7 day basis. It said earlier that Facebook will deliver directly the aggregated and anonymous program-related conversations on Facebook, including posts shared with friends, family and beyond.

The Social Content Ratings adhere to guidelines created by the Media Rating Council (MRC), with sponsorship and input from the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).