While there were many ways to celebrate America’s birthday, hardcore television fans made sure to binge-watch their favorite finales and premieres between pieces of pie and fancy fireworks.

From alien attacks to a hilarious pursuit for purpose, we analyzed the social pages of Falling Skies, Salem, Zoo, Extant, and Happyish to find out two things. First, which show had the most active audience, and second, which of the following plots pumped up the highest volume of social interactions:

• A surprise attack leaving the 2nd Mass desperate and without food on the season premiere of Falling Skies

• Alden balancing between life and death on the season finale of Salem

• A young scientist searching for the cause of violent animal attacks on the season premiere of Zoo

• Molly escaping a psychiatric hospital to investigate some some bizarre, eerily familiar deaths on the season premiere of Extant

• Thom quitting his job after writing an unusual story about a church, a cop, and underwear on the season finale of Happyish


The Social Totals

The skies may have been falling on the screen, but social media engagement climbed upward for Falling Skies, which generated a total of 55.6K engagements for a 32.3% market share. The second season of Salem secured second place with a supernatural amount of reactions, with 45.0K engagements for a 26.1% market share.

Active Audiences

Having the most engagements overall is no small feat, however it’s only part of the story. In analyzing just how those engagements are spread across audience size, we’re able to determine just how in-tune fans are with each show’s content. In this case, Zoo’s audience got in touch with their wild side by racking up 1,747.0 engagements per 1K users—more than twice the amount of activity as the runner-up show. The sci-fi, dramatic, thriller Extant also did very well in this category; it got fans sharing, commenting, liking, retweeting, and favoriting at the speed of light generating 439.3 engagements per 1K users.

Salem (finale)
Facebook: 391644
Twitter: 44153.0

Falling Skies (premiere)
Facebook: 1262586
Twitter: 83914

Happyish (finale)
Facebook: 14119
Twitter: 1811

Zoo (premiere)
Facebook: 31032
Twitter: 1910

Extant (premiere)
Facebook: 139055
Twitter: 9761