BTS‘ weeklong takeover at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon took over all of social media: The series generated the No. 1 “most social week” in late-night television ever, The Tonight Show exclusively confirmed to Billboard.
With the late-night event’s designated tag #BTSWEEK becoming the No. 1 Twitter trend worldwide, The Tonight Show ranked No. 1 as the most social entertainment program of the week (excluding sports and the first presidential debate on Sept. 29). The late-night show’s total social engagement was up approximately 1300%, yielding its most social week in the series’ history. It garnered approximately 10.5 million interactions from its five airings between last Monday (Sept. 28) and last Friday (Oct. 2) across its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
“I tailored our digital strategy for #BTSWEEK entirely around the fanbase. Utilizing mainly YouTube Premieres and Twitter, I wanted to create an exciting digital experience that would be accessible worldwide across any platform or device,” said T. Kyle Macmahon, head of digital at The Tonight Show, in a statement to Billboard. “Fans were able to watch together live from all over the globe, communicate via YouTube’s live chat, and tweet together in real-time. By keeping each performance a surprise every night, in the digital space we were able to replicate the excitement of watching live TV.”
Thanks to the ARMY, The Tonight Show gained 1 million new fans across all their social media channels (900,000 of which came directly from YouTube), 3 million shares, 27 million responses and 119 million video views.
1 MILLION new subscribers during #BTSWEEK?!
WE 💜 YOU ARMY!
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) October 6, 2020
The Tonight Show is the most-viewed entertainment TV program on YouTube in a 52-week period from September 2019 to September 2020, garnering more than 2.3 billion views.
BTS’ fun-filled five-day residency consisted of special-edition performances of their Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Dynamite” (including an encore disco rendition for the final show), “Idol,” “Home,” “Black Swan” and “Mikrokosmos,” some of which were filmed at the iconic Gyeonghoeru pavilion at Gyengbok Palace in Seoul. RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook also played silly games from “Dance Your Feelings” to “Zoom Olympics” and reminisced on their high school days and teased their upcoming deluxe edition album BE (out Nov. 20) in interviews.
“BTS was the perfect fit for this because their fanbase, nicknamed the BTS Army, is one of the most socially engaged, digitally savvy, passionate, and loyal fanbases on the internet,” Macmahon said.