While the build-up was slow, the discussion regarding Trevor Noah started in earnest a week before his first show and fully ignited during the broadcast.
A snapshot of Twittersphere’s response to the show (the day after being aired on South African TV), showed that nearly 110 000 posts had been made and was still climbing.
The @trevornoah account received the most mentions (over 35 000) with @thedailyshow featuring over 23 000 times. In a reversal of numbers with over 13 000 hashtags, #dailyshow came out ahead of #trevornoah, which obtained just 2 600.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) collected over 4 700 retweets to his “Congratulations to @TrevorNoah tonight. @TheDailyShow’s new opening credits now show Earth rotating in the correct direction” while Trevor Noah himself was re-tweeted 3 100 times.
His first ever guest Kevin Hart (@KevinHart4real) tweeted “I couldn’t be more excited 2 sit down with @TrevorNoah on @Dailyshow on Monday the 28th. Looking forward to a fun conversation man #Congrats” and was retweeted more than 1 800 times.
“These stats aptly demonstrate how people are consuming multiple media sources at the same time,” says Marius Greeff, commercial director of Spark Media. “While watching The Daily Show on TV, consumers are simultaneously engaging with social media platforms on other devices, and in this case, Twitter in particular.”
While there were many complimentary mentions, the South African connection was certainly made as a total of 14% of all tweets made mention of Trevor’s South African background.
“He has certainly put us on the global entertainment map,” says Greeff. “We look forward to providing our clients with ongoing Insights that Ignite.”