An awesome thing about television is that social media exists. You can watch people freak out over the latest death in a show and share your pain with others when the season is finally over. An awful thing about television is that social media exists. You can watch people freak out over the latest death in a show that you haven’t caught up on, spoiling it for you, and share your hatred with others when they just tweeted about the cliffhanger to a finale that you’re currently DVRing because you’re stuck at your girlfriend’s family party.

Clearly, I’m still bitter about that. Anyway, point is that, like it or not, Twitter has been monumental when it comes to television, and it’s hardly just an accessory. Would ‘Breaking Bad’ be as huge as it was without the constant word of mouth on Twitter? ‘Breaking Bad’ happens to be this television season’s most talked about show on the social networking site, as reported by Nielsen.

Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston's 'Breaking Bad' was the most talked about show on Twitter

It doesn’t come as a surprise. The finale to ‘Breaking Bad’ was breathtaking, and the barrage of tweets that came every Sunday during and after each episode of the final season was overwhelming. Coming in second is ‘The Walking Dead,’ which had an average audience of 5,168 with average tweets of 576. Confusing, I know, but what that means is that five million Twitter accounts viewed one or more of the 576,000 tweets that were made about ‘The Walking Dead’ each episode, which basically means that it was really popular.

Amongst TV series are other charts, featuring things like the top TV specials, which were The Oscars at number one and The Grammys at number two. Finally, the top ten sporting events included Super Bowl XLVIII as well as the championship games leading up to it.

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I guess, overall, there’s nothing particularly interesting about the charts, because all of them pretty much get the same “well, duh” reaction. However, it is interesting to see how social media affects what’s most popular. Now that ‘Breaking Bad’ is over, which show will take its place?

Will it be ‘The Walking Dead’ moving up a spot to number one next fall? ‘Game of Thrones’ came in at number five, and it’s seemingly getting bigger and bigger as each week goes on, so it’s definitely likely that it becomes the most talked about show on social media eventually. For sporting events, you’d figure that their popularity would differ based on the teams playing, but I don’t think anything will ever dethrone the Super Bowl as the most popular television event every year. However, the Oscars and Grammy Awards were competing neck and neck this year, so when the season comes again, it might come down to the performers that the Grammys will have, or the movies nominated for the Oscars.

Game of Thrones
Can 'Game of Thrones' take next season's top spot?

For other television shows this fall, it’s likely that the new season of ‘American Horror Story’ will make its return to the chart once again, as will ‘Pretty Little Liars’ and The Voice. But can we be seeing new additions, such as the new season of ‘Homeland,’ perhaps? Either way, whatever becomes the most popular television show of the season, it’s clear that social media is going to play a big role in it. But please, for the sake of everybody on the Internet, chill out on tweeting spoilers at least until, like, five days after the episode airs.

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