Olympics Take Social Gold

The Summer Olympics in Rio dominated TV-related social media posts on Facebook and Twitter Tuesday night (Aug. 16) with more than 3 million uniques, according to Nielsen Social.

"Uniques" are defined as "social media accounts that have authored original content related to a linear TV episode or engaged with that content."

The Olympics aired was across six networks -- CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, NBC Universo, NBCSN, USA Network -- over several hours, with 3,410,000 Facebook uniques and 488,000 Twitter accounts.

In fact, sports (and faux sports) programming took three of the top four social spots, with the Red Sox and Orioles game on MLB Network placing third, with 102,000 uniques, and WWE Smackdown on USA placing fourth, with 87,000 uniques

Second for the night was Freeform's Pretty Little Liars, with 260,000 uniques.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.