It's normal to see head trauma -- decapitations included -- inflicted on zombies on The Walking Dead, but when was the last time you saw someone lose a head on Nickelodeon?
Well, if you watched the Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, you maybe have been shocked to see magician David Blaine become headless in front of an audience of confused children and parents as actor Andy Samberg screamed in horror into a microphone.
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That TV moment, as well as Nick's strong social media strategy going into the ceremony, helped the Kids' Choice Awards rank No. 1 on Nielsen's weekly Twitter TV Ratings.
For much of 2014, The Walking Dead claimed the top spot on this weekly chart. On Sunday, as Walking Dead viewers learned the terrifying truth of the long-sought-after Terminus "sanctuary," fans posted more than 1 million tweets.
Comparatively, 2.1 million tweets were posted about Kids' Choice Awards. Nielsen's data for both take into account all tweets sent during the broadcasts as well as those sent three hours before and three hours after their airings.
The Kids' Choice Awards had the added advantage of having social voting happening before and during the ceremony, which meant Twitter users could vote for certain categories and stunts with tweets incorporating any one of many corresponding hashtags.
To give context to how significant social voting helped uptick the Kids' Choice Awards (KCA) total tweet count: In the days leading up to the KCA broadcast, Nick attracted more than 55 million votes, with nearly 2 million votes per day, a Nick spokesperson told Mashable.
Not to discount from KCA's social prowess over the weekend, awards shows in general tend to generate high tweet figures. Of the only two times Walking Dead fell out of the top spot on the Twitter TV Ratings in 2014, one of those occasions was the Academy Awards.
The #Oscars tops Nielsen's weekly Twitter TV Ratings, dethroning reigning champ The Walking Dead pic.twitter.com/zfW2BY9eU8
— Brian A. Hernandez (@BAHjournalist) March 3, 2014
Diving deeper in the numbers, more accounts tweeted about The Walking Dead (357,000) versus KCA (266,000), resulting in almost the same amount of unique audiences (6.5 million versus 6.7 million), which Nielsen describes as the number of "accounts accruing at least one impression of one or more different tweets ascribed to a TV episode."
Nick also set up social media booths throughout USC’s Galen Center in Los Angeles, including the GIF Booth, Vine 360 Booth and Twitter Selfie Mirror.
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