PBS “struck social media gold” Sunday night when it tweeted during the Super Bowl’s half-hour power outage that viewers should switch to Downton Abbey instead, reports Paid Content, a site that covers online business models.
The tweet read: “This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS.”
Kevin Dando, PBS’s director of digital marketing and communications, told the site that the timing was perfect, because the weekly online Downton discussion was taking place. As soon as Dando tweeted the suggestion, “within seconds, we saw hundreds, then thousands, of retweets.”
It quickly became one of PBS’s top two re-tweeted posts. The other was last fall when presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned Big Bird during a debate.