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Methodologyv2.0Updated April 2026

How Buzz Score works.

A look at Buzz Score, the daily attention index Television Stats publishes for TV shows, movies, and people. What goes into it, how signals combine, and what it means.

What goes in
Website visitsReviewsTracking activitySocial discussionSocial followingTorrent activityBuzz ScoreOne daily attention index
Website visits
Reviews
Tracking activity
Social discussion
Social following
Torrent activity
Buzz Score
One daily attention index

What Buzz Score measures

Buzz Score captures the size and intensity of the audience paying attention to a title on a given day. It is not a review score, a ratings prediction, or a viewership figure. It's a daily attention and engagement index, built so that thousands of titles can be compared on one scale.

A score of 100 is calibrated to the typical daily top-of-chart title. Most titles sit well below that.

The scale
0
Quiet
0–2
3
Good
3–19
20
High
20–49
50
Excellent
50–79
80
Phenomenon
80+

The signals

For shows and movies, Buzz Score is built from several independent categories of public online activity. Each captures a different way audiences express interest including looking something up, logging it, following it, talking about it, or seeking it out.

  1. 01
    Website visits
    Readership of the most comprehensive public reference pages about a title. The clearest signal of general-public curiosity. It captures everyone from casual searchers to fans checking facts after an episode. The biggest component is Wikipedia pageview data.
  2. 02
    Reviews
    The volume of new reviews audiences are leaving for a title. Reviews are a strong signal of engaged viewers, people who cared enough about a show to write about it after watching.
  3. 03
    Tracking activity
    Activity on watch-tracking apps where users log episodes and titles they've watched as they go. This measures committed viewers who are following a show week to week, rather than passing interest.
  4. 04
    Social discussion
    Activity of dedicated online fan communities around each title.
  5. 05
    Social following
    Follower growth on major social platforms.
  6. 06
    Torrent activity
    Active peers sharing a title on public torrent networks. A direct indicator of demand from audiences outside of official distribution.

How signals combine

Signals are normalized, blended, and scaled into a single daily score.

Step 1
Normalize
Each signal is put on a common scale so platforms with very different raw numbers can be compared.
Step 2
Blend
Signals are combined with a weighted average and some data cleaning.
Step 3
Scale
The result is scaled so 100 is the typical daily chart-topper.
On the data
Not all signals are used for each show and movie. The exact weights and details are proprietary, but please reach out if you have questions.
Subject to change
Buzz Score evolves over time to improve accuracy and adapt as the availability of underlying data changes. Updates can affect both current and historical scores, so a title's chart may shift slightly after a methodology update.

Buzz Score for people

Shows and movies use the signal categories above. For individual people, Buzz Score takes a simpler approach.

People are often more complicated and difficult to accurately measure than titles. An actor's Buzz Score is based on Wikipedia readership, weighted so that actor scores sit on the same 0–100+ scale as TV shows and movies.

Buzz Score over time

A single day's Buzz Score is a snapshot. Show, movie, and actor pages also surface several time-windowed versions of the score so you can see where a title sits today and how big it got at its biggest.

  • Today's Buzz Score
    The daily score. The big number on every show, movie, and actor page, updated once per day.
  • Peak Buzz Score
    The highest 30-day rolling average a title has ever reached. A stable measure of how big the title was at its biggest.
  • 1-Year Buzz Score
    The average daily Buzz Score over the last 365 days. Captures durable attention across a full year. New shows will take a year for this to fill out.
  • Season Buzz Score
    For TV shows, the average Buzz Score across the 30 days starting from a season's premiere. Makes it possible to compare a show's seasons directly against each other.
Cultural Phenomenon
A designation given to titles whose Peak Buzz Score has ever reached 80 or above. Titles that earn this tier display the Cultural Phenomenon badge on their page.

Data freshness

Scores are recalculated daily, covering the prior calendar day. A new day's scores typically publish each morning in US Pacific time. Charts and rankings on show, movie, and actor pages always reflect the most recently completed day, not the in-progress one.

Publishing may be delayed if the underlying data is late. A day gets held back rather than shipped as a partial-day score.

What Buzz Score doesn't capture

Things Buzz Score is not good at, on purpose:

  • Exact viewership
    Buzz Score tracks attention, which correlates with viewership but isn't a substitute for it.
  • Non-English-language titles
    Most Buzz Score signals skew toward English-language activity. International titles with strong local followings but limited English online presence will score lower than their true global audience suggests.

Changelog

Major changes to the methodology are noted here. Smaller calibration adjustments are logged internally.

  1. 2026-04-16
    docs
    Methodology page published for the new Buzz Score.

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