Here Are the Most Liked TV Shows by Geography

Programs with the biggest Facebook followings among city slickers, farm folks and whatever the Extended Black Belt is

As FX boss John Landgraf will (repeatedly) tell you, there’s a lot of TV out there. According to a recent study conducted by the New York Times, where a viewer lives plays a consistent role in what they watch.

The midtown Manhattan paper of record published some cool colored maps online Tuesday to demonstrate which TV shows were most popular, based on some good old-fashioned American geography. TheWrap recommends you click over to check out the neat graphics, but before that, we can share some of the most interesting takeaways below.

First, the methodology: The Times looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code “liked” certain TV shows, and found that the 50 most-liked shows clustered into three groups with distinct geographic distributions.

“Together they reveal a national culture split among three regions: cities and their suburbs; rural areas; and what we’re calling the extended Black Belt — a swath that extends from the Mississippi River along the Eastern Seaboard up to Washington, but also including city centers and other places with large nonwhite populations,” the newspaper wrote.

Those aforementioned 50 shows then each got their own maps — it was all quite a feat in shades of purple and pink.

Finally, the NYT included a fun interactive tool at the very bottom of its report, where a reader can enter his or her own zip code to find out which series are popular and unpopular in their town, and what other areas have similar and dissimilar tastes.

Here are the series found to be most common in their respective areas, in alphabetical order:

Urban Areas

Adventure Time
American Horror Story
Family Guy
Game of Thrones
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Modern Family
MythBusters
Once Upon a Time
Orange Is the New Black
Saturday Night Live
So You Think You Can Dance
South Park
The Big Bang Theory
The Daily Show
The Simpsons
The Tonight Show
Tosh.0

Rural Areas

16 and Pregnant
American Dad!
America’s Funniest Home Videos
Bones
Cake Boss
Criminal Minds
Dancing With the Stars
Deadliest Catch
Duck Dynasty
Fast n’ Loud
Grey’s Anatomy
NCIS
Pawn Stars
Pretty Little Liars
Ridiculousness
Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory
Supernatural
Teen Mom
The Vampire Diaries
The Voice
The Walking Dead
Wipeout

Extended Black Belt

106 & Park
Bad Girls Club
Empire
Keeping Up With the Kardashians
Law & Order: SVU
Love & Hip Hop
Real Housewives of Atlanta
Scandal

Comments