Summer Heights High Fandom (Social Media Integration)

At least in one conversation a day I will hear some reference to Summer Heights High. The ABC show has reached tipping point. SHH is a comedy mockumentary about two students (Jonah Takalua and Ja’mie King) and a drama teacher (Mr. G) at a Public School in Melbourne.

The show is a run away success but there are a number of other interesting phenomena happening around the show. The support online for the show is phenomenal. I think this is so important for television shows because people can immerse themselves to a deeper level and interact with the content at different times. For instance I had some friends over for dinner last night and we went on youtube and watched the Jonah Montage from last episode.

The following is a documentation of the support from Social Media for the television show.

1. Vodcast
They have decided to release it on vodcast. It is now the highest rating Podcast in Australia after only 2 episodes. Following the success of the ABC’s The Chaser War on Everything and Media Watch vodcasts.

2. Online Social Networks
They have also set up Myspace Pages for the characters. The reason the Myspace page works so well is the constant information stream, people have something new to say every week after the episodes are released. Ja’mie King currently has 24,000 plus friends.

There are a number of facebook groups in their name two of the most popular

Summer Heights High Appreciation Society
500 members

Fans of Jonah Takalua and Polynesian Pathways
820 members

Youtube

They have also released video montages of the specific characters, my favourite being Jonah has had 150,000 hits for his first play and 23,000 for his second.

Homesite
They home site leaves a lot to the imagination with a dress up game which is an email to a friend. Would of worked better if it was an application on Facebook which people could send to friends.

I haven’t finished with this beast called Summer Heights High in future weeks I will be posting on SHH and;

Word of Mouth/ Social Currency

Consumer Insights

New audience for the ABC