Most in-demand TV premiere

Over the 24 hours of 14 April 2019, the premiere episode of Season 8 of Game of Thrones ("Winterfell", HBO, USA) generated 25.46 demand expressions per capita (DEx/c), using the metric devised by data-science firm Parrot Analytics. This figure represents the highest ever one-day demand – across multiple platforms – for the premiere episode of a TV series. HBO confirmed that 17.4 million people watched the episode on their subscription TV service and on their HBO GO and HBO NOW streaming apps.

Parrot Analytics has devised a system of “television content demand measurement” that quantifies how viewers are engaging with TV shows. It does so by analysing “Demand Expressions” worldwide – everything from video consumption (streaming/downloads) to social media (hashtags, liking, sharing) and research and commentary (reading or writing about shows, etc.). The more effort – i.e., time – invested by the viewer, the greater the weighting. The interest in a programme is assessed in terms of “Demand Expressions per capita” (DEx/c) – the overall average daily global audience engagement with a show per 100 people within a set time frame.

In terms of pure viewing figures, an even greater number of people watched the third episode of the season – "The Long Night", depicting the Battle of Winterfell – according to HBO, who registered an audience of 17.8 million watching live and streaming the extended 82-minute episode. Twitter also confirmed that this episode generated the most tweets ever for a scripted TV show, with more than 7.8 million messages posted.