If you know anything about me, you know that I love my weekly dose of Grey’s Anatomy. I love it so much, in fact, that I am the official PopWrapped recap writer of the series. (Check them out on Thursday nights!)
Now, Grey’s was not my first medical drama, nor will it likely be my last. In real life, I am a huge baby. I cut my finger a few weeks ago, and almost passed out because there was blood on my hand. No, it didn’t even require stitches, but it’s a good example of how NOT-medical minded I really am. Since I watch Grey’s, however, and I have since it started, I feel like that I have an above average medical knowledge, and I can solve almost any medical problem without medical assistance. Do you need a new appendix? Well, I have seen Mer do it a few times, so I probably could. Do you have a broken bone? Easy! Callie has taught me everything I need to know. Bottom line – I love medical dramas.
So, it should be no surprise that I have become fascinated with some new research that recently came out from Bay Alarm Medical, that looks at social media and medical TV shows, including Grey’s Anatomy. What did they find? It’s interesting:
House, M.D. Reigns Supreme
Bay Alarm Medical
I have a confession to make. I have never seen House, M.D. (Don’t worry, I already added it to my Netflix queue.) Looking at these results, however, if I love talking about Grey’s on social media, I will love talking about House M.D. even more. In fact, when you look at the number of “likes” that the House Facebook page has compared to the number of “likes” Grey’s has, it’s almost double! Grey’s has almost 22 million “likes,” and House has almost 41 million. It doesn’t end there…
This study also looked at what medical professionals thought about these medical dramas, and as with the general public, 1-1.5 million medical professionals “like” the House page, and 400k – 450k “like” Grey’s.
Bay Alarm Medical
House is also the highest rated on IMDB.com.
Women Like Grey’s More
Bay Alarm Medical
There is one area of the study where Grey’s beats House when it comes to social media, and just like the Presidential election, it comes down to women. Women, according to this study, like both Grey’s and House more than men do, but the fandom of Grey’s is 91 percent women, compared with 63 percent of women who are part of the House fandom.
What do the men like? You have to look further down the list of popular shows to get there, but it’s fairly unsurprising. There are more men than women who like Scrubs, M*A*S*H, and Dr. Ken. In addition to Grey’s Anatomy, women far exceed men in fandoms for Nip/Tuck, General Hospital, Nurse Jackie, and Chicago Med. (For the record, I also loved Nip/Tuck and Nurse Jackie...I guess I am more ordinary than I thought!)
What does all of this mean? It means A) I really need to watch House, and B) Social media and medical television shows are greatly connected, and fans of these shows are no strangers to social media. I would love to see more out of these studies, such as how other social media sites, such as Twitter users, talk about these shows, and more on demographics, such opinions by age. I also think it would be interesting to see how the popularity of these shows has changed over time thanks to streaming TV such as through Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
What do you think? Does this study change the way you feel about medical television?
Author
