Proposed Fall 2012 Coverage Schedule

As our reason for existence is to be the best 2nd screen app for reading and writing honest, fan sourced social TV content, we thought we’d show you our proposed fall coverage schedule and let you tell us what we’re missing before we set the schedule in stone.  There is a separate list of special events, such as the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Presidential Debates, etc, but these are the proposed recurring shows.

We could go on about how these shows made it to our list because they rank highly in social TV metrics, but we’d rather hear from you.  Either leave a comment for all to see, or email us your opinions at Show_Request@sidecastr.com.  We’ll be finalizing by next week, so vote early and often – and soon!

Week of 9/9 – 9/15: Fall TV Begins! The Voice, Glee, SNL and more…

The Fall Lineup of covered shows here at Sidecastr is becoming clearer, and this week is kickoff week for some of the great falls shows and sports coverage we have planned.  The Voice (NBC) kicks off with 3 nights of blind auditions with the return of all 4 judges/singers: Adam Levine, Ceelo Green, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton.  Glee (FOX) begins season 4 on thursday night, where we’ll see how the show can adjust to most of it’s main characters graduating and attending college in different cities!  And SNL begins season 38 (!) with guest host Seth MacFarlane and musical guest Frank Ocean.

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 9/9:

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Week of Sep 2 – Sep 8: DNC 2012 Primetime + MTV Video Music Awards

This labor day week transition between summer series and fall premiers is marked by live special events.  Sidecastr kicks off its Presidential Elections 2012 coverage with live primetime  coverage of the Democratic National Convention on CNN (10p -11p ET).  And the 2012 MTV VMAs are also this week (9/6 from 8p – 10p

We weren’t quite prepared to cover the RNC convention last week and debated long and hard about the fairness and the optics of picking up the DNC this week.  We settled the matter in favor of yes when we realized that if the order had been reversed, and the RNC were to have happened this week, we would have made the same decision and would have covered it instead.  Simply a matter of readiness, not of political leaning.

The second issue was which network to follow.  That was easier.  We are covering CNN simply because in 2008 (and every 4 years prior) it was the most watched network for DNC coverage, and is expected to lead the ratings again this year.  As many of you know we sync to a show via audio recognition, but in this case the speeches should sync across all networks as long as the commentators aren’t talking.  For perfect syncing, tune into CNN

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 9/2:

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Sidecastr covers 17 of top 25 Social TV programs in August

We must be doing something right!  As those who follow us know, Sidecastr is selective about the shows we cover, because once we cover an episode, we don’t just keep its synced social stream around for an hour, or a day, or a week – we keep it alive and syncable for our users… FOREVER.

When we pick a series, we stick with it for the season, come hell or high water.  So it’s imperative that we try our best to make the right choices upfront.  We are excited to report that, in August, we chose well enough to have covered 17 or the top 25 social TV shows as tracked and reported by SocialGuide Intelligence.   Sidecastr covered episodes that made the list include various XXX Summer Olympics Primetime events (NBC), Teen Wolf (MTV), Awkward (MTV), and the top episode of the month, the finale of Pretty Little Liars (ABCFam).

If you missed any of these or just want to watch them with the social stream in playback mode, you can find them on Sidecastr for iPad

Week of Aug 26 – Sep 1: And Then There Were 5: The Quiet Before the Storm

The end of August is traditionally one of the quietest TV weeks of the year.  The fall series premiers are being locked and loaded and we here at Sidecastr are hard at work putting the finishing touches on our Fall lineup.  In the meantime, we are proud to point out that we are still covering some of the most popular social TV shows of the summer, including Pretty Little Liars, Awkward, and Breaking Bad.

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 8/26:

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Week of Aug 19 – Aug 25: More Summer Finales for Suits (USA); Anger Management (FX)

The summer shows are continuing to hit their finales this week, clearing the decks for the 2012 Fall series to debut over the coming weeks.  This week, two Thursday night shows: Anger Management (FX) and Suits (USA) wrap up their summer runs, leaving only Awkward (MTV) left on our Thursday night covered show schedule.

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 8/19:

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Here at Sidecastr we are readying our V1.1 update (featuring awesome integration with Facebook) and gearing up to cover a whole slew of Fall series and topical events like the Presidential debates.  We choose which shows to cover based on social TV ratings, requested shows sent in by our user base, as well as some good old fashioned judgement, especially when it comes to brand new series with no social metrics track record.  We’ll be finalizing our schedule in the next couple of weeks, so send us your requests through the app (Request a Show) or email us at show_request@sidecastr.com.

Don’t forget to check out our new VIP Feeds feature

Cool new feature debuts this week: VIP Feeds

Those of you who watched last night’s Breaking Bad (S5E6) might have noticed a cool new feature that debuted during that episode that we will be rolling out over the next few weeks for all of our shows: VIP Feeds.VIP feeds are Sidecastr for iPad categories that showcase unfiltered, real-time social content posted during the show by one or more featured sources or contributors.  We can mix and match feeds into any grouping that makes sense, for example: Cast Tweets, Superfans, Network Posts, Celebrity Posts, etc. Unlike our normal categories, our users can reply but generally not post a top level sidecast into one of these categories. Another difference is that the social content aggregated in VIP feeds are unfiltered posts by the VIP sources rather than being superfan filtered like the external posts going into our regular categories. But as with any of our categories, all content is synced to the moment you are watching, whether live or time shifted, you can add, remove, and rearrange VIP categories like any other, and your replies and ‘likes’ can be fed to twitter as @replies and retweets.

Tonight’s episode of Real Housewives of New York City will feature a new VIP category called ‘CAST Tweets’ and feature live tweets during the show from the Real Housewives themselves. Let us know what you think!

Week of Aug 12 – Aug 18: Teen Wolf Finale, Martin Sheen as Charlie’s Dad on Anger Management

The Olympics were an amazing social TV watershed moment, which not only served to entertain but truly affected the way NBC adjusted their coverage.  Case in point: overly chatty non-sports anchors for the opening ceremonies were displaced by much less intrusive anchors with sports cred (Al Michaels + Bob Costas).  Plus the live online streaming of the full closing ceremony was an unplanned addition made after the social media feedback demanded it after the opening.  Sidecastr was your companion for all 66 hours of primetime coverage over 17 days!   Now we return to a more sane schedule ;-).

This week Teen Wolf ends a very successful season 2.  And Anger Management features Charlie Sheen’s real life dad Martin Sheen in a bid to re-ignite audience interest int the show in Thursday’s episode of Anger Management on FX.

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 8/12*:

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* XXX Olympics, NBC Primetime series will be removed from Sidecastr’s active archive after 8/18, so if you want to relive any DVR’d primetime coverage, be sure to do it by then

Week of Aug 5 – Aug 11: Olympics Final Week, Dallas Finale, BH Nannies –>Tuesdays

Finales already?  But J.R., we just got used to those bushy eyebrows!  TNT’s 10 episode initial run of Dallas ends on Wed 8/8, but is set to renew in 2013 for 15 episodes.  Also this week, ABC Family moves it’s new series Beverly Hills Nannies to Tuesdays at 9 (from Wednesdays), presumably to get a bump following Pretty Little Liars.  Of course the big news this week: the Olympics wraps up its final week of events, and Sidecastr continues its 7-day NBC primetime coverage, wrapping with the closing ceremonies on 8/12.  In total Sidecastr this week features 37 hrs of super-fan selected (absolutely! each hour there are beating hearts picking the best tweets for you in real time), perfectly synced social TV!

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 8/5*:

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* Sidecastr will depart from its normal model of keeping all coverage available indefinitely for time-shifted viewing.  In the case of our Olympics coverage, all our coverage will be available from 7/27 thru 8/18.  After 8/18, the Olympics “show” will be removed from the site.

Week of July 29 – Aug 4: Primetime Olympics continues – Whew!

NBC’s Primetime Olympics has received its fair share of criticism via social media users, but it’s coverage has achieved over 30M viewers average per night – a blockbuster achievement http://lat.ms/PtnZ1X.  Sidecastr has covered every hour of primetime so far, and has kept up its normal show schedule – quite a juggling act when you consider that we have a contingent of superfans who need to be scheduled and coordinated to help filter and organize the live, raw twitter stream into a well paced, ‘best of social’ selection that we’re becoming known for… Thank you superfans!  And our apologies for getting our weekly schedule out a bit late this week… we promise to be back on schedule again next time ;-).

Here’s our full schedule for the week of 7/29*:

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* Sidecastr will depart from its normal model of keeping all coverage available indefinitely for time-shifted viewing.  In the case of our Olympics coverage, all our coverage will be available from 7/27 thru 8/18.  After 8/18, the Olympics “show” will be removed from the site.