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Who's watching what where

by EmmaZahn 5/29/2012 - 9:07 pm

How good are you at guessing what TV shows are popular where?  I was surprised by some of what AdAge's two new interactive maps revealed.

Top Network Shows by County Type

Top Cable TV Shows by County

Counties have been assigned descriptive demographic labels like Boom Town, Tractor Country, Moneyed Burbs, Minority Central, Evangelical Epicenters, Service Worker Centers, Immigration Nation, etc.  It's a marketing site.

You might guess that Bobby Jones Gospel would be popular in Minority Central, an area across the old South where blacks are often a county's majority, but would you guess they also like Cold Case?  

Or that Evangelical Epicenters across the upper South like the CW's Supernatural and Storm Stories?  

Or how the group Mormon in Utah likes Glenn Beck best but also likes Chuck?

Or how Immigration Nation in south Texas and New Mexico like Frontline and Ghost Lab.

It was also a surprise to see NASCAR so popular across the northern states but not so much in the south.

People.  Sometimes there is just no predicting them.

 

 

 

 

Really fun stuff, Emma, thank you.

I am bummed out to find I am handicapped in that I don't know what some of the shows are. And not the ones some might expect--I know perfectly well who Bobby Jones is, thank you very much; it's some of those network shows I don't have a clue about. That's what having to have cable does to you, (in most of NYC we never got decent broadcast reception, and that got worse when the WTC fell,) you never look at all those primetime network shows, there's always a movie or award winning cable or PBS series, a news channel or something else preferable going at the same time. For example, I only know about "30 Rock" from what I have read about it in the Times. And many people in the rest of the country have at least seen parts of primetime shows from time to time, because even if they have cable or satellite or watch a lot on the computer, they have a broadcast TV or two or three blaring in other rooms of the house.

After a first quick look at the maps (I'm going to go back and look more) all I can say is that maybe I should change my tolerant opinion about Utah and Mormons! From these maps, it looks like a foreign country hidden inside the US! An insular tribe apart from its neighbors!

by artappraiser 5/29/2012 - 11:39 pm

Glad you liked it.  

I don't know very many of the shows either for the opposite reason.  Never subscribed to cable and since DTV, broadcast stuff is iffy.  I do watch some of them online at Hulu or the channel sites.  Since DTV, I cannot get PBS anymore even though I am supposedly in range of three different broadcast towers so I had to watch Masterpiece's Sherlock online.  I had to look up the cable show for my county, Top Shot.

Some of the results were so counterintuitive that I wondered if some of the data was possibly skewed by special programming.  Still fun though.

 

 

by EmmaZahn 5/30/2012 - 12:22 am (re: artappraiser)

I'm not sure what this TV thing is you're talking about, but 30 Rock I know…

by Verified Atheist 5/30/2012 - 9:59 am (re: artappraiser)

If you are still rethinking Utah, you may want to consider this little factoid I just read here: 

Utah, which ranks tops among the states both in self-reported happiness and anti-depressant use. 

:-/

by EmmaZahn 5/30/2012 - 5:53 pm (re: artappraiser)

I was surprised by the car racing too. I think I read that 98% of all NASCAR fans are repubs.

Of course what is the question? My favorite show?

This Bobby Jones thing is just a joke. The voters probably thought if they didn't vote for some fundamentalist they were all goin to hell!

by Richard Day 5/30/2012 - 12:04 am

Did you notice how much Tractor Country really likes Blue Bloods?

by EmmaZahn 5/30/2012 - 12:25 am (re: Richard Day)

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