BLOG: So, Reed Hastings, boss of Netflix, has aimed his bow and arrow at linear TV. Hastings thinks Netflix is the only future for TV and film consumption: on-demand and via broadband. Bye-bye channels. On Radio 4’s The Media Show he boldly predicted the end for ‘traditional TV’ as consumer behaviour evolves. I was invited on to respond; I disagreed then and I disagree now. A few days later, in The Guardian, he plucked another arrow from his quiver and again loosed it at linear TV, comparing it to ‘the landline of 20 years ago’, Netflix being the mobile phone...

15 million people watched all or part of the first ever live televised election debate between our three largest political parties, delivering an average live audience of 9.4m. This was not only something quite new in the evolution of our democracy, but also a gripping bit of telly that got us tens of thousands Twittering, Facebooking and Googling – plus millions chewing it over in livings rooms and pubs across the nation. A programme like this reminds us that TV is the most social medium of all. In all the hype about social media’s important role in the Obama campaign, it’s often overlooked that it was the live TV debates and a huge TV advertising campaign that mobilized support for Obama in the first place, which the web then captured and amplified so profitably. The money that Obama raised online was then ploughed back into buying more TV advertising. Here you can read about ITV’s innovative cross platform approach to the debate, get the key social network figures and also find out how various types of analysis were used to monitor the performance of the contenders in real time. It’s a story of sentiment analysis, a worm and a place called Tweetminster.