“We don’t have watercooler talk the next day we have watercooler talk the minute it happens as you’re watching the episode.” Danielle Mullin, vp marketing at ABC Family - who now oversees a dedicated team of six to 10 live tweeters per episode, including series stars - says, “We were very surprised. “They were one of the first shows to spend significant investment on social media.” Even before PLL debuted, a Twitter account was created in 2010, “the same time Twitter found its legs,” says actress Troian Bellisario, 28. “ Pretty Little Liars does a good job of meeting fans where they are,” says Jenn Deering Davis, co-founder of Union Metrics. The social media space is where the show’s core audience lives: 31 percent of Twitter users fall under 30, compared with only 19 percent for adults 30-to-49, according to Pew Research. Life is extended beyond the TV screen by continuing the conversation year-round, through plot-specific hashtags, Facebook apps and targeted use of Twitter and Instagram. 9.3 million viewers to the June 15 season finale). It is the third-most-tweeted-about 2013-14 series after Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, with an average reach of 4.8 million users, trumping Game of Thrones (3.5 million users vs. So how does the creative team do it? By allowing its viewers a significant place in the PLL universe, driven by a social footprint that is disproportionately large compared to its traditional ratings (averaging 3.9 million total viewers in live-plus-7). STORY ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Producers Promise ‘Nonstop’ Ride, Reinvention in Season 5 1 series with a rare two-season pickup, “This is our version of the Super Bowl.” TV Group president Peter Rothsays the property compares well against the rest of the studio’s portfolio: “ Pretty Little Liars has resonated about as much as anything we’ve ever done.” Adds network president Tom Ascheim, who on June 10 secured ABC Family’s No. “In an environment where TV has become fragmented, the show has become stable, and they’re watching it live,” says Leslie Morgenstein, CEO of Alloy Entertainment. (Season four averaged 2.7 million viewers in time-shifted viewing among the target 12-to-34 demo, up from 2.5 million in season two.) While live viewership among the younger set has been declining in favor of gaming consoles and mobile devices, according to a 2013 Nielsen cross-platform report, PLL has bucked the trend, pulling in night-of viewing with steadily increasing ratings. STORY ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Hits 100 Episodes: Stars, Producers Reveal Craziest Twistsįueled by an enviable online presence - 13.7 million Facebook fans, 2.22 million on Twitter and 668,000 Instagram followers - it’s no wonder PLL, whose median viewer age is 21, has become the “how-to” in keeping an elusive demographic, younger viewers, deeply engaged. The finale is the top tweeted television episode on Twitter to date for 2014. His unclear fate was magnified by the worldwide-trending #IsEzraAlive hashtag and drove PLL‘s highest tweet volume for the year with 1.45 million. On March 18, Pretty Little Liars brought Twitter to a fevered pitch when in the final minutes of the season-four finale, the villain known as “A” nearly was exposed by a beloved character, Ezra, who found himself taking a bullet to protect the main characters.