Zachary Levi
The day before premiere of his new show, Heroes: Reborn, would air on NBC last month, actor Zachary Levi responded to a fan on Twitter who asked if he’d be live-tweeting the occasion.
“I will not,” he wrote. “I find it interrupts the actual viewing experience of a television show.”
It wasn’t long before several critics came out of the woodwork to criticize his position — including William Shatner, who replied with some simple hashtags: #bigmistake #butwhatdoIknow?
Despite getting shut down by Captain Kirk himself, Levi makes a valid point. We all agree it’s rude to use your phone during a movie and social suicide for viewers even to let theirs buzz or ring during live theater. We criticize those who take photos and videos on their phones during concerts and sporting events for supposedly looking at life through a lens. So why don’t we afford television the same respect?
It’s true — Twitter is TV’s greatest marketing tool. The social media site offers networks ample opportunities to engage with fans by favoriting, retweeting and replying to their messages. It also gives them an opportunity to attract new audiences via promoted tweets and trending topics.
Twitter users are notorious for live-tweeting during culturally important events such as award shows and political debates. Now, more and more, you can find them just as active on the site during an episode of How to Get Away with Murder or American Horror Story, recording their reactions to every plot twist in real time. Between the tweeting and retweeting, it’s a wonder any of them are able to, you know, actually watch the show.
The fact of the matter is that certain shows lend themselves to publicly expressing shock at a surprising revelation or rapidly sharing a hilarious one-liner. But whether or not a show is particularly Twitter-friendly isn’t a genuine indicator of its overall success or failure.
If there was ever a time to weed out those myriad predictable sitcoms and clunky procedurals, it’s now, in the midst of “peak TV.” Unfortunately, hashtags often trump ratings and reviews nowadays. As a result, shows like FX’s low-concept comedy Married struggle to get picked up for another season while others, like The CW’s shark-jumping Supernatural, sit pretty on the air for more than a decade.
At the end of the day, we should be watching, analyzing and judging thoughtfully to ensure strong shows stay on the air and the weak, well, don’t — however fun they might be to tweet about.
