Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team entered its 14th season on CMT in August of 2019, giving audiences across the country the chance to watch passionate ladies fight for their spot on one of the most sought-after cheerleading squads in the nation. Although it’s the longest running program on CMT, it didn't have an expansive digital and social presence prior to this latest season.
Since the series and the squad itself have loyal fans looking for any and all DCC-related content out there, it was time for CMT to bridge the gap between the linear series and fans on digital and social. We wanted to expand the brand’s online presence where it previously did not exist by increasing our digital footprint, elevating our online content and creating custom content to engage fans. We pushed ourselves to become an “always on” content brand, giving fans access to original, digital video with the goal of increasing both our digital numbers and the series linear ratings as well.
Prior to Season 14, DCC did not have a YouTube channel so that was our first priority. We needed to establish a fan base on the platform and bring exclusive content to those fans on a consistent basis. Creatively, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team brand needed to provide a variety of content to feed the new YouTube fanbase. We provided fans with weekly episodic recaps of each episode this season as well as scene lifts and highlight clips of fan-favorite moments, chosen from assessing real-time social data. Through comments, views, likes and dislikes, we determined the type of content our fans wanted to see and tailored our video packages to fit their needs. For example, we found that video featuring the squad getting fitted for their uniforms was well-received by our audience, so we created longform pieces that touched on makeovers and uniform fittings. We took note of which dance moves and tricks performed the best with our fans and used those insights to select which sneak peeks and scene lifts to upload to the channel on a weekly basis.
We heavily promoted the DCC YouTube channel across our other social platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which allowed us to reach our audience in various settings and bring them all together on YouTube. We kept up with a consistent video upload schedule each week, providing fans with episodic recaps, scene lifts and highlights, digital originals and compilations four times per week during the linear airing of the show and twice per week in the off-season in order to keep the audience active despite the show being off the air. And we frequently utilized the YouTube Community tab to further promote new video content on the channel, and we continue to do so in the off-season of the linear airing to continuously engage fans.
Our strategy paid off! We talked loud and proud about DCC and Fridays nights, and people listened. Throughout Season 14, YouTube accounted for 17M total views and 41.6M minutes of watch time. Across all our social platforms, Season 14 saw a 442% increase in views, and a 2000% increase in time spent viewing when compared to Season 13. To date, our YouTube channel has 43M total views and 126M minutes of watch time.
And on linear, Season 14 was the most-watched season EVER. It had the highest L+3 ratings in series history; a +25% increase in L+SD ratings over Season 13 (the highest since Season 5 in 2010); and 480% growth in L+3 ratings over live ratings.
We were able to find our voice on a new platform with the DCC YouTube channel, bringing a previously-established fanbase to a new platform and reaching new fans of cheerleading, football and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders alike.
